Home To Roost
by Brithund
Summary: It's a Solstice Special! After 4 years (local time) Plucky and Margot return with their growing family to find only 3 months (Acme Acres time) have gone by. Margot wants revenge, Plucky wants to watch TV and eat pizza, preferably both...
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

**Being the 4****th**** in the increasingly inaccurately-named Teen Toons Tales Trilogy, following on from ****'****Spring Fever****'****, ****'****Loonquest****'**** and ****'****Seven Brides for Seven Bunnies****'. Now read on…**

**December snow was falling on Acme Acres. This caused less surprise to its residents than it probably should have; the mere geographical fact of their fair city being set in supposedly warm Southern California was more than balanced by the fact that some plotlines needed wintery scenes. So without any further argument from puzzled weather experts more used to predicting global warming, snow was most certainly falling. (So there.)**

**"It's a Toon Thing." Babs**** Bunny, rising young film star just returning from her latest Hollywood****triumph, cast her coat hood back to let a few lucky flakes land on her warmly pink furred ears.**_** S**_**he paused at the exit to Acme Acres Airport, where her aircraft had just landed from Hollywood.**

** "It's certainly fair. You don't get much snow in fall, but you do get a fall of snow." Buster Bunny stood by the side of his wife looking at the familiar landscape, before rummaging in his Hammerspace pocket for a notebook and pencil. "Hmm. Not a bad line, that, but it still needs some work. Viewers watching in Maine or Alaska in November might have a quibble with it. A quibble or a quarrel, even."**

** "Oh, you. You always say everything needs more work." Babs gazed at her blue-furred buck lovingly. **

** "Well, at least we don't. Not right now. We've been living on stage sets and around the studios for three months solid. We're both due some time off." Buster winked. "Especially now the money's starting to roll in. Writing and acting both – ka-ching! Sweet deal." From somewhere not clearly defined, there was the special-effect sound of an old-fashioned cash register ringing up a sale.**

** Babs nodded, her eyes sweeping the airport lounge to see if any of their friends had made it through the drifts to meet them. "The studios have been busy. They'll be in post-production till January. Who'd have thought they had to make so many posts?"**

"**You could put a twin-row picket fence round Texas with them," Buster agreed.**

"**Anyway, you've written and sold your script, they made the movie with it and I've starred in it. Couldn't be neater." Babs' eyes grew misty for a second. "And who'd have thought you could take an old one-minute battery commercial and develop it into a three-hour Action Romance Blockbuster spanning nine continents? With prequels and sequels lined up?" ***

****** (*) (Editor's note; the extra continents were specially designed and added to the film using cutting-edge CGI.)**

**Buster grinned in embarrassment. "Pink bunny. With a battery that won't quit. Keeps going on and on. Type-casting maybe, but it fits my dear pink wife so why not? Hey, I just picked up the ball and ran with it."**

** Suddenly Babs waved. "Well, look who it isn't!" Mary Melody, here to meet and greet." She smiled slyly, took a deep breath and gave her trademarked yell. "I'm heeeerrreee!"**

** "You lucky, lucky people," Buster added dryly.**

** Mary Melody made her way through the crowd, dressed in a stylish green business skirt-suit that certainly cost more than a junior reporter could pay. "Babs! You're back!"**

** Babs cast a glance over her shoulder to her cottontail. "My back – my front, too. I brought them both along." She snickered. "Great to see you. You're not carrying the camera and microphone today?"**

** "Oh – there's a reason for that." Mary nodded significantly. "You might say I've gone up in the world. But I'll tell you later. Things have changed. Come on, Jaggi' s waiting outside with MTV."**

** Babs posed. "I'll have to talk to my agent about that. We're under studio contract, you know."**

** Mary smiled. "Not that MTV. It's in the parking lot."**

** "The plot thickens, already" Buster said. "And we only just got here."**

** As they picked up their luggage, an equine couple next to them suddenly began to sniff the air curiously and look around, evidently not seeing something their noses were telling them should be there. The male, a standard Toon donkey, flicked his ears and curled his lips back showing his teeth in an equine grin. His wife dipped her ears right back against her head, pulled out a large Toon mallet and flattened him.**

** Babs and Buster followed Mary out through the airport to the parking lot where a familiar zebra was waiting by a large six wheeled off-road vehicle.**

** "Nice ride," Buster commented. He grinned. "Let's guess. You had a Some_Terrain_Vehicle before. This is the next model up – a Most_Terrain_Vehicle?"**

** "Bang on!" Jaggi DiSpeckle applauded. "This is MTV. We're borrowing it while we're on this job. Did Mary tell you?"**

** "Not here," Mary said firmly. "Let's get inside."**

** They piled into the vehicle, and pulled away into the traffic. "So, what's the big secret, then?" Babs asked. "You're working top-secret for the Toons In Black ™ now?"**

** Jaggi grinned. "Nearly. You know that bunch Shirley's joined, Unit Four Plus Two? They want independent reporters along all the time to do their live shows. Embedded, that's the phrase."**

** Buster scratched between his long blue ears. "Top-secret ultra-black Ops. Live shows. Hmm."**

**Mary smiled. "We get to go along and report on everything they do – it's broadcast to worldwide satellite, no cuts. And at the end I get to look straight into the camera and say **_**'this is a true, unedited account of your Black-Budget Tax dollars in action. That's all, folks**_**.****'**** Nobody believes it."**

"**I can see how that would work," Buster mused. "All the conspiracy-chasers spend their time looking for hidden things that nobody ever talks about. The harder you try and get people to believe you – the less they really do. As if any real secret unit would talk about it, let alone broadcast."**

** Jaggi's long head nodded. "Mary's getting famous as a comic and horror host presenter – as far as the public think. They keep asking who writes the scripts and does the special effects, whenever something from Beyond breaks in and we film it live – or Undead, whichever. Serious Toons who know the real score just watch how well she does, knowing it's really just straight reporting."**

** "And the Toons who know how difficult that is, know how well you're working the camera and sound, Jaggi," Mary tapped her fiancé's broad shoulder. "It takes two of us."**

** In twenty minutes the MTV reached Acme forest, and the new but little-used burrow that Babs and Buster had dug at the end of Summer. Babs stretched, wriggling her cottontail and smoothing out her ears. "Home sweet hole! How I've missed you." She pulled out a key, found the inconspicuous keyhole in a nearby boulder, and turned it. The ACME surplus missile silo door slid aside with a quiet rumble, pushed-aside snow piling up in a steep mound.**

** "We knew you'd be coming straight from the airport," Jaggi said "So we got a trunk-full of supplies, saves you wading through the snow to the store. Everything carrot-based. Hope you like it."**

** "Why, our very favourite! How DID you guess?" Babs waggled an eyebrow. As Jaggi and Buster started to unload, she hopped down into the burrow in a single bound while Mary made a more sedate arrival down the spiral stairs.**

** Babs looked around slyly, and winked at Mary. "So, how's it going? You and Jaggi?" She patted a well-stuffed sofa, and the two friends sat together.**

** Mary sat next to her. "We're making progress. Things are certainly starting to happen for me."**

** "Oh? DO tell. In all the messy, exciting details." Babs' pink nose twitched eagerly.**

** Mary shrugged. "Well. This time last year at Acme Loo, the casting sheets always listed me by species as a 'humanmaid'. Since Spring, what with me and Jaggi I've left off being a maid, as in maiden. No complaints there."**

** "At the Loo we earned enough qualifications – that's one you can afford to lose." Babs said.**

** "Yes. That's not the only change. It's only natural. If you work out in a gym every day, you're telling your body that's the way it ought to change to suit what you're doing now – and it does. You get toned and fit. Being with Jaggi – it's the same sort of thing." Mary closed her eyes, contemplating. "Though it's nothing that really shows, to look at."**

**Babs' eyes went wide. "You were a humanmaid, before. You're becoming a – humanmare?"**

**Mary nodded. "Jaggi says I smell like an equine girl. My chemistry's changing. So is my… calendar, you might say. It's an equine thing."**

"**Ooooh! So, it won't be just Christmastime you'll be able to offer him 'season's greetings.' Pretty soon, I guess?" Babs sniffed discreetly. She doubted Mary could spot it herself; Toon humans had very poor senses of smell, but a bunny nose definitely detected a perfume that Mary had not bought at the Acme mega-mall.**

"**I hope so. And then – we'll see what develops. I won't develop stripes or a tail – I'll look forward to seeing those on our foals, though." Mary looked her friend up and down. "How about you? You look great." Privately Mary thought Babs was looking a little tired, but she had just been through an air journey.**

**Babs grinned. "Oh, same old, same old fame and fortune. But this biological bunny? The only thing me and Buster have 'in production' so far is the big movie we're in. We've done all our bit of it; the last scene of us they shot was three days ago." She hesitated. "We've got the option of shooting an all-action sequel next year. I'm thinking about it. It's a good career move, it's what we trained for all those years, but…" she cast a glance towards the unfinished corridor at the end of the burrow. Rabbit burrows were planned with almost endless expansion in mind.**

**Mary followed her gaze. "That's always going to be a problem – filling up the cinemas with fans, or the burrow with kits. They're both good, but doing everything at once is tricky." Her eyes suddenly widened. "But – you said Buster wrote the script for your film – and fitted it to you?"**

"**He did. He fitted it to me like a Paris costumier's finest creation." Babs twirled elegantly.**

**"So… see if Buster can write a script that needs a star who doesn'****t need special effects or expanding costumes to finish the film with kits? Schedule the scenes over a few months to use all that… authenticity. You can put the script on the shelf, and take it off when you need it." Mary said.**

** Babs slapped a pink forehead dramatically. She looked around for any lurking trademark lawyers, and moaned. "This doe says… D'oh!" Her whiskers twitched. "How could I not spot that one? It's elegant. Of course Buster can fix the problem – and he should, after all, it'll be him causing it. How things change. I remember back in our first Summer vacation, it was just his water pistol he was – squirting me with."**

**Mary blushed, her toon aura standing an inch clear of her actual body. **

**Babs winked at her embarrassment, raising an imaginary glass. "Ah. To bucks. The cause – and solution – to most of life's little problems." She looked up, contemplatively. "Maybe Buster can write a WashingToon based story about a talented, adorable young Economist dealing with inflation – and not just the nation's. Hers too. We can maybe call the movie 'Ain't she Swell?'"**

**"May all your troubles be little ones," Mary quoted. For a second she relaxed, and then heard the cargo lift start up as Buster and Jaggi descended with crates of carrot-based comestibles, an****d even some food. **

** Babs nudged Mary, gesturing upwards with her ears. "Ah, boys. What's the betting they wasted their time talking about football? Not as if they have anything – important to think about. Unlike us." She yawned, stretching as she relaxed on the sofa. "It's so good to be home. Anyone else back for the holidays?"**

** Mary looked at her friend. "Oh, yes. When you drop by your old burrow – I think you'll find out."**

* * *

**As Mary Melody knew well (having met them at the airport), over in the new annexe to the burrow Babs had grown up in, there were some more graduate Toons who had returned to Acme Acres after a long time away. They had arrived early that morning, after a long-haul flight that had left them jet-lagged and definitely travel-stained. While there was no immediate cure for jet-lag, their other problem was easier to solve – and that minute they were working on it.**

**Rhubella Lafume swished her tail with relief, as she stepped into the shower with her skunkette bride. "Ah, at last. I've looked forward to this the last twenty hours. We should film this for the Japanese anime market. It must be a rainy climate, over there. Nothing but showers, looks like. They can't even do a weather report without a gratuitous shower scene or three." She turned on the water, turned and posed invitingly under it, slowly turning to let the hot spray soak her fur. "All good clean fun."**

**"Japan was tres cool, non? And meeting up with chere Merumo aftair all zis time. And 'er 'usband, ze Legendary Overfiend. Just back fr****om zeir 'oneymoon in ze Warp – wherever zat ees." All her friends had souvenir postcards the former exchange student had sent them from her husband's homeland; at least, they resembled postcards in that they were two-dimensional, even if neither of the dimensions used were those normally accessible in EinsToonian Space-time.**

** "Still. It's nice to get back to Acme Acres. It feels like home. And since Mrs Bunny put the extra shower in this bit of the burrow – we can take our time." Until the holidays began the week after, Babs' siblings were busy with school or college and the Bunny family main burrow in the morning resembled an underground station with a rush-hour that never stopped till the last one was out the door, carrot-filled lunch box and all.**

** "Mais oui!" Fifi's eyes went wide at the sight of her wife's back stripe. Rhubella had chosen to have her model sheet permanently altered; her statement to the world that she wanted her family future to be skunk-patterned. To a non-Toon, the equivalent would have been germ-line bioengineering. She ran her finger down that stripe, and shivered with excitement. "Ze drowned rat, eet eez not ze sexiest idea – but ze wet-look one – ooh, la la." Her clothes joined Rhubella's on the bathroom floor. There was a quiet pop as she 'unconcealed.'**

** Rhubella LaFume smiled, running soaped paws down her fur. "I'm glad you like the view. Just you and me – plus our little additions." Her pristine white stork's feather had not left its gold chain since that day in Summer when it had arrived – it never seemed to pick up any dirt or moisture, to her amazement. In Fifi's case some things had changed – much for the better, Rhubella thought. "Mmmm… you look amazing." She ran a finger down Fifi's front, between the skunkette's breasts to the slight bulge at her belly. "I'll never tire of this." She turned to pick up the soap, before standing nose to nose again. "This is a life of luxury – and I don't mean these gold-plated bath taps." She had happily paid for the Bunny family to install a gold-plated shower; it had been a purely practical move seeing what Fifi's corrosive musk did to chrome and stainless steel when her passions were roused.**

** Fifi's tail instantly began to fume, as her hard-wired reactions took over at the sight of Rhubella's back stripe. Her eyes crossed as she looked down to where Rhubella's paw rested lovingly on her tummy-fur. Suddenly she giggled. "Ruby, you 'ave ze – bump-envy?" Rhubella's figure was much as it had been a year ago, with no sign but the feather that she was expecting a stork's little bundle. **

** "Well. I'm the first one in my family to go the stork route. You're much Toonier than me. That stork's scheduled to find me sometime in early March – generally whenever least convenient, so I'm told." Rhubella kissed her wife's broad pink nose. "Considering I'm 'expecting' – this isn't quite the way I expected it."**

** "Zat makes two of us. For Fifi, May time it eez for ze 'appy event." Fifi kissed back. "Zo rare, to 'ave ze Toon babies by la route biologique. 'Oo evair saw une femme enceinte, in ze classic cartoon films?" She gently pressed against Rhubella's paw. "I love your figure, zo athletic, Ruby mon champion – but poor Fifi, she eez now only ze world champion at ze tossing of ze cookies."**

** "Mrs Bunny – I mean, Babs' mother – I asked her about that. She said she never got that problem, but she always went the stork route – not that anyone really gets the choice which way it happens. Rabbits must get discounts; I bet she earned that stork frequent flyer miles. Twenty-six children in six litters, oh my." Rhubella's eyes went wide. "Makes you wonder if Babs is planning on carrying on that tradition." The meme needed an active host, and Mrs Bathsheba Zoe Bunny would be passing it on sometime, presumably to someone in her family. Considering the family alphabetically indexed their children by their middle names, with a name like Zoe, being from the twenty-sixth litter Babs' mother had evidently been very familiar with that meme. As had her grandmother.**

** Fifi giggled. "Babs, she is working 'ard, wanting to be big in 'Ollywood. Moi, I will at least be – big." She lovingly soaped Rhubella's fur, running her fingers down the smooth rat tail. "She 'as 'er loyal fans already. She ees keeping zem 'appy, with ze films."**

** "Yes. It's important to give good fan service," Rhubella agreed, her tail twining with Fifi's as they pressed close under the hot spray. "I might not have gone to Acme Looniversity but I've picked up a few ideas about that."**

** Fifi gave a sigh, as she relaxed against the tiles of the shower wall and enjoyed Rhubella's tender massaging. She gestured at her wife, respectably dressed if only in wedding ring, stork feather and soap-slick fur. "Eet eez a good thing Babs and Shirley, at least zey are ze film stars; zey are putting ze Looniversity training to good use." She gave a Gallic shrug, standing with the soapy water running down her slick fur, her tail starting to fume invitingly as her wife knelt and caressed her. "'Oo would evair pay to see a film of 'zis?"**

* * *

**About a hundred and ten miles away from Acme Acres, the scenery was wilder with steep river valleys winding up into the mountains. That was so even in the 'civilized' timeline; although the mountains were the same, on a timeline where civilisation had somehow never caught on, there were far fewer people around to see it.**

"**Four years." Plucky Duck looked around the primal, unspoiled landscape of what only he and Margot knew should be called Northern California. Snow lay on the peaks to the North. "We've been castaw****ays in time four whole years now. I wonder what the world's like by now, back home."**

**Plucky and Margot Duck stood outside a substantial timber and turf hut, built on a commanding bluff above a wide, shallow river that sparkled in due season with migrating salmon, as well as the occasional glint of gold in the gravel. They wore little except their bare feathers most of the year, but now were warmly clad in thick grey direwolf fur jackets as they looked out at the sunset.**

** "Whatever it's been doing without us - we've not exactly wasted our time." Margot stood and stretched. "Brandi and Candi are a fine pair of girls. And this is an interesting development." She ran her feather-hand over her round belly. "No storks to make the deliveries around here, seems like. Still. Who needs them?"**

** Plucky nodded. "But our daughters are missing out on so much. And we'll be left behind. I bet some world-class gaming geek in Japan or South Korea's already beaten my top score at Retro Rocket Rumble." He turned to his white-feathered daughters, reminiscing. "You should have seen me win the international prize at GameCon! I was a dead shot mega-scoring ace with a first or second-generation ballistic missile. I could bang that Corporal or Sergeant missile warhead slap bang on target every time – plus or minus a mile expected deviation but hey, that was the tech standard of the time." His expression was sorrowful. "Living here away from civilisation, our kids won't even know what I'm talking about."**

** "You went to a lot of conventions?" Margot asked, interested. She had sat back and listened for many long dark evenings while Plucky told science-fiction stories to their chicks – many of them somewhat skewed versions of the classic Star Disputes and Cattle-car Galactica that he had tweaked to give himself the starring roles in. She liked best the tales of the indefinitely continuing mission of the starship whose pre-launching party had been so drunken that the next day the hung-over crew had forgotten to engage the navigational computers before engaging their craft's totally-warped drive. **_**Start-Wrecked, that was the name of the series**_**, she mused. They were now hopelessly Lost In Space ™, their ship's lawyers frequently in expensive special-effects deep-space battles with the lawyers of the sci-fi franchise of that name. **

** "Sure! That's another thing I miss. Hotel room parties, staying up till dawn, weekends living on crottled greeps, the number one sci-fi Convention food. It's a classic." The green duck's eyes went misty. "It was educational, too. Seeing how they crottle a greep. They'd rigged up two big old 1960's Westinghouse 20 megawatt nuclear reactors running in series, on loan from Acme Atomics. That's what it takes."**

** "It's not all bad, being away from our time" Margot cast her husband a sly glance. Many would have found him more annoying than amusing, but not her. "It had its dangers as well as treats. They might have already had that Class Four Zombie Apocalypse you kept planning for."**

** The green mallard's face fell further. "The Zombie Apocalypse. Pivoting point of History. Time of great heroes and adventure. Chainsaw warriors in Hillbilly armour. Desperate struggles in the ruins of grand public buildings. The one percent who survive inherit all the world's inedible treasures. So much neat stuff. And I'll have missed it all?"**

** Margot raised an eyebrow. "In case you hadn't noticed, around here we already get sabre-toothed tigers, direwolves and mountain lions all trying to eat us… I think that'll do to be going on with, on the duck devouring lines. And unlike fighting off the local wildlife, you can't eat zombies even when you win." She patted the hides they were lying on.**

"**Eww. Even Dizzy Devil wouldn't want to." Plucky shivered. "And he eats anything."**

"**At least Brandi and Candi are getting an education, and just the kind they need out here. Running Bare is a good teacher, for talents like theirs." Margot smiled at the thought of the scantily dressed Native hawk shaman whose nomadic tribe they had spent Spring and Summer with on the coast far North in what someday would be Oregon. "I can teach them to hunt with the bow, and we can teach them a lot more from our old world – but psychic powers, aren't our thing."**

**"They'll never need to struggle with light****ing a fire rubbing two sticks together, that's true" Plucky agreed. "Pyrokinesis. Telekinesis. They hardly need a bow for hunting. Whoo-hoo! Real horror-show, what they did to that bobcat that wanted to invite them for dinner, his way. They're Early Achievers!"**

** "Yes." Margot nodded thoughtfully. The loon chicks could levitate a rock the size of their heads already – but throwing it that way was a very inefficient use of their energy when it came to defending themselves. She had cut up the bobcat for dinner, of course, and found nothing her limited medical knowledge recognised as to what killed it. But the chicks were familiar with razor-sharp obsidian blades the family had traded some metal for with the locals – and it was a fairly simple progression to imagining the chicks projecting a psychic version of one held steady in space, slicing inside the charging predator's brain. "Maybe it's just as well they're out here, with powers like that. There are advantages with the simple life. Everything's friend or foe, and there's no need to ever pull any punches." She suddenly snickered. "I imagine if they ever went to a playground, doing that to a bully just might be frowned on. Just a little bit over the top."**

"**Overkill. That's your new word to learn for the day, k****iddies," Plucky smiled, and bent to pat the white head-feathers of his daughters. "Over-kill. Doing something twice as amazingly well as lesser Toons without your amazingly talented ancestry might have. Like that hot film star Mae West said in the 1930's, '**_**too much of a good thing is simply wonderful**_**.****'"**

**Evening fell, and they retired to their hut out of the increasingly chilly wind and barred the wickerwork door. The traps were set outside, woven matting suspended over seven-foot deep pits with sharp surprises at the bottom. Twice that Summer, invading predators had found out about those the hard way, and their hides now helped furnish the nest.**

"**It's definitely getting time to move South again, and out of the hills" Margot turned the freshly-caught salmon on its skewer over the fire-pit; the air was filled with its aroma. "The salmon run's almost over for the year. It's a close thing with the snows."**

"**Snows, shmoes," Plucky waved a feather-hand dismissively. "We've got a month's supply of dried fish and jerked meat. And you're Olympic class in the bag-a-deer-for-dinner event, with that bow."**

"**Mmmm. I have been, yes. But I'm not quite at my athletic peak right now – or hadn't you noticed? And that'll get worse before it gets better. Right in the middle of winter, too." Margot relaxed on the furs, stroking her rounded belly. She snickered. "I never thought I'd get turned into a housewife. Hut-wife, even. I'll be fine for cooking and fire-tending at midwinter, certainly – but not for running down any more deer."**

"**Oh. There is that." Plucky rested a feather-hand on his wife's bump, looking lovingly into her eyes. "Still. We'll have weeks yet before we have to head for the coast. This valley's great! I keep finding lovely, sparkly nuggets. Look at this one I grabbed today!" With a flourish, he pulled out a rounded pebble of gold-banded quartz that weighed an ounce, and held it up to the firelight. "How about that?"**

**Margot smiled. "Very nice. But right now I'd trade it for an evening in a hot tub. The nearest natural ones are probably down in Monterey – or the place it's going to be."**

"**Next year! We can head there next Summer. Something to look forward to. Brandi and Candi should be flying soon." Plucky hesitated. "It's a pity you can't fly. It's a long walk."**

**Margot shrugged. "Pros and cons. Not having hollow lightweight bones makes me stronger. And tail-feathers tend to get in the way – for some things. Besides… would you really have wanted to have to throw up your meals to feed the chicks for a couple of years, natural bird style?"**

"**Eww." Plucky shivered. Not for the first time, he thought about exactly what Shirley had landed him with, exiling him so far from a corner mall. Had she simply taken off and dumped him with her eggs, leaving him in Acme Acres while she while she ran away for a wonderful life of film stardom and elite military action combined – at least he could have fed them with infant formula and hired the occasional babysitter. "I think for once in my life – having you here, my luck's finally turned."**

"**Oh? Stuck here struggling to survive, without as much as an old Weenie Burger cup to drink out of?" Margot paused, contemplating. "Still - you've got as much tax-free raw gold as you can carry, and you own this version of Hollywood – as much as anyone does." She relaxed, lying back on the somewhat smelly pile of poorly tanned hides – not exactly five-star comfort, she mused, but far better than lying on the bare ground. She had done plenty of that in the past few years.**

**Plucky kissed her. "I've got you. And I'd trade any version of Hollywood for that."**

**Margot kissed back, fiercely. "You're right. I've got the hottest film star in the business, all mine." She wrapped her feather-arms around him, her bill stroking her husband's.**

**It was another long late Autumn evening, as the fire in the hut slowly died and the mallard family drifted off to sleep. Outside, just after midnight, un-seasonally heavy snow began to fall.**

* * *

"**Oh, crab-cakes." Plucky opened the door the next morning and looked out on a white world. The snow was knee-deep and still falling, with heavy clouds filling the valley blotting out the view beyond a hundred yards. "This'll take some time to melt."**

**Margot joined him and they looked out. The eight feet of ground inside their hut was the only snow-free spot in the valley. "This is trouble," she said flatly. "It's weeks earlier than last year."**

"**Hey, so it's not like we've not seen snow before," Plucky shrugged. "We've got plenty of food to see us through till it melts. Then it's five, six days down to the coast."**

**Margot's bill twisted in worry. "It might not melt. Not before Spring. Last year, once the snows came they stayed, but then we were watching them from the coast. We haven't got a Winter's worth of food. And we don't have three cords of dry firewood stacked up, like we'd need – we don't have three days' worth. That's a problem."**

"**We can carry Brandi and Candi through the deep bits - or rig up a sledge. That'll do it! Hey kids, how about a sleigh ride? That'll be fun!" Plucky's optimism had a slightly forced note to it.**

"**Mmm. The sleigh's a good idea," Margot mused. "We'd better take all the food we can carry. And leave anything heavy."**

**Plucky's feathers turned a sickly shade of green. "All that gold. All that lovely gold."**

**Margot wrapped a feather-arm around him. "I know, Plucky. But it'll keep. We can bury it under the hut and dig it up when we come back here next Spring. First – we have to make sure we'll BE here next spring."**

**Plucky nodded. He sighed, shrugged on his direwolf-hide Winter jacket, and picked up the stone axe he had traded with Running Bare's tribe for a perfect mirror that only he and Margot knew was a Russ Meyer DVD. "Off to the woods to get some green timber, before it's all snowed under. Looks like we've got a sledge to build."**

**For two long days the snow kept falling. Every day Plucky and Margot looked up hopefully with the grey dawn, hoping to see some break in the weather. Soon it was waist-deep, a soft sticky snow that clung to the newly built sledge's runners despite their being well lubricated with bear-grease.**

** "This isn't a sledging contest – it's a ploughing contest!" Plucky dragged the sledge back after another test run, angrily kicking at a hundred pounds of wet slush clinging to it. "If it would only freeze hard and crust over – you can't sledge through porridge!"**

** "We can't wait much longer," Margot looked out at the snowdrifts. "When the firewood runs out, we've got to go, ready or not. We can't get any more dry wood, with knee-deep snow in the forest. The longer it snows, the longer it'll take to melt. This time of year – you don't get that much melting. This is full-on Winter, a month early."**

** "Yipes." Plucky's head-feathers bristled. "We're in trouble."**

** Margot nodded silently. She helped Plucky off with his jacket. "Right now – at least we can have a good meal. We've the last of the fresh salmon to eat up. And there's plenty – so we'd better dig in." She looked around the hut; a Summer's daily work had got it as comfortable as the available materials would allow. "After we leave here, the next few days at least we'll be eating in the snow."**

** The two mallards sat around the fire that evening, savouring the scent and taste of the salmon – the snow had been a blessing in one respect, keeping the gutted fish stored outside in it more or less fresh.**

** "Eat up, kiddies," Plucky handed Brandi and Candi a second portion. "And sleep warm tonight!" He winced inwardly; the next few nights were likely to be anything but warm. This hut was never meant to be a winter retreat, but it was cosy enough while the firewood lasted. He judged they had enough for the night and a final hot breakfast.**

** "Story, daddy?" Candi looked up at him as she finished her fish.**

** Plucky relaxed. He patted the mound of hides when everyone had finished eating, and his mate and daughters snuggled close. "Oh yes. Where was I, last night? My heroic adventures back in our home-world."**

** "You were chasing the Mad Doctor XXy, last time I heard it?" Margot reminded him, amused. **

** "Oh yeah! That was it." Plucky took a deep breath, and his eyes went distant. "With my amazing detective powers I'd tracked him to the airport. That's… a bit like the big pond by the coast, where the wild birds take off and land. But it's smooth rock, and the birds are metal. Toons ride them." **

** Brandi and Candi nodded, their eyes bright.**

** "So. I was only just in time. Doctor XXy was ready to launch. I got to the runway just behind him as he started spooling up his afterburning scramjet engines and slowly began to taxi forward, his plane heavy with the weight of two Universe-Destroyers he'd just built. He was going to use them and claim the insurance on everything. I mean, Everything."**

** Brandi frowned. "One could bust the whole Universe?"**

** Plucky patted her white head-feathers. "Sure thing, sweetie. That's the calibre of foe the Toxic Revenger is matched against!"**

** "So – if one can destroy the Universe… why have two?" Candi put in. "What the other one for? And how he claim anything afterwards?"**

** "And why bother moving them anywhere? Wouldn't it be all the same if he set it off sitting on it?" Brandi asked.**

** Plucky hesitated. "Because… because... hey, they didn't call him a Mad Doctor for nothing!" He grinned triumphantly. "That's the kind of thing they do. But that's the kind of foe the Toxic Revenger defeats! Anyway, using my amazing stealth powers, craftily I sneaked up on him…."**

** Margot snickered to herself, as Plucky's tale of Hollywood-starring heroics grew wilder with each telling. **_**If we ever got back**_**, she reminded herself, **_**there's a mallard who's got a lot to live up to.**_

**Dawn hardly came at all the next day, and it was in a dim half-light that Margot fed the last scraps of wood onto the fire. Outside, the snow fell thicker than ever.**

** "What I wouldn't give for a hot, strong, unsustainably sourced, unethically traded FoulPlay coffee right now," she said, looking into the meagre flames. "Plucky? Wake up. Better get the chicks dressed. In about half an hour this hut's going to start cooling down all the way."**

** Plucky stuck his bill out of the hut, and sneezed. His eyes went wide in alarm. "Yipes! It's snowed another foot in the night."**

** Margot nodded, heating water in the birch-bark bowl that Running Bare's tribe had shown her how to build. Getting the wooden tongs out and dropping red-hot pebbles in from the fire-pit was a laborious process without burning the tongs or bark container, but it more or less worked. In the last few years she had wished for many things, but a plain metal cooking-pot most of all.**

** "Breakfast, kiddies!" Plucky sniffed the heated water. "Ah. Reconstituted jerked deer flesh. What a joy. Eat up; we've a long way to go."**

** "Mmm. And we can't carry everything." Margot looked pointedly at her mate's collection of gold nuggets. "Time to bury the loot."**

** Plucky sighed, and nodded. He pulled out a fire-hardened digging-stick and began to excavate. **

**An hour later, they were looking at the dying embers of the fire, four waterfowl bundled up in their warmest furs. **

** "So long, hut sweet hut," Plucky wiped a tear from his eyes. "Look after our all our lovely gold. We'll see you again in the Spring."**

** Margot finished strapping the last of the food bags onto the sledge. She took a look around the inside of the hut. "It's a pity your Toxic Revenger form can't carry us all, any more. That's the trouble with Toon shticks; they're so – cultural. They lose their power when they're away from their milieu."**

** "Yeah. Professor Coyote said something about them tapping into something like that. He also said 'you only get steam-engines when it's steam-engine time.' Calamity always quoted that." Plucky briefly spin-changed into his pollution-busting Superhero form, which now was just a fancy-dress costume. It had gradually lost its powers in a world without pollution, and he had not wanted to experiment and see if starting a few smoky forest fires would re-charge it. "I coulda flown to the coast with the kids, then come back for you."**

** "Leaving Candi and Brandi fifty miles away on their own to become some predator family's duck dinner? I don't think so." Margot shook her head. "Back at Perfecto in our first year, they set us a puzzle like that – ferrying a fox, a goose and a bag of grain over a river with a very small boat that can only carry one at a time. Leave the goose alone on one side with the grain, the grain gets eaten. Leave the goose with the fox, the goose gets eaten."**

** "Erk. Good point." Plucky blenched. He took a deep breath. "Well, this is it. Off we go, to the sunshine!" He took the strain on one towing-rope and Margot took the other, Brandi and Candi on the sledge snuggled in between the food bags with a fur rug over them. "And now – waggons roll! Next stop the beach!"**

* * *

**Eight hours later they were back, panting with exhaustion and worried looks on their bills. The powder snow had been more like waist-deep water; even broad waterfowl feet sank in deep, and they had ploughed a trench through it rather than pulled the sledge over the top. That had not been the worst of it.**

** "Avalanches. Who'd have thought it?" Margot groaned. "This early in the year?" As if to add a perfectly timed sound effect, the air shook with the distant rumble of another big slide a few miles down the valley. The way to the coast was closed. **

** "We can't get out. Not with snow like this." Plucky sat down disconsolately, while Margot shook the snow off the hides on the sledge and brought the chicks inside to a cold hut. "The valley bottom's the only way we can get the sledge through. The rest's solid trees." He cast his mind fondly back to the Acme Forest he had known in his home timeline, where even in the wildest parts there were trails and firebreaks in all direction. A trackless wilderness was just that. **

** "We'll have to wait it out. At least we've got food," Margot shrugged. "If it won't melt, it might at least freeze up, in a few days." She unpacked the supplies. "Raw dried fish."**

** Plucky gave an embarrassed grin. "Just think of it as lightweight sushi."**

** Margot hugged him, inviting their chicks to share warmth under the fur robes. "It's certainly getting colder." Outside, night was falling.**

** "Story, Daddy?" Candi looked up at Plucky, her white feathers fluffed up.**

** "Sure, sweety." Plucky nodded, eager for any distraction from the chilly evening. He handed out the dried fish, looking sadly at the grey ashes in the cold fire-pit. "I remember it well, from my days on the retro Rocket Force… we'd take on all evil-doers, and we had a zero-tolerance policy."**

** "Zero tolerance to what, exactly?" Margot asked, intrigued. How Plucky ever managed to put himself as the heroic central figure of what she knew were arcade video games, always surprised her. Retro Rocket Rumble was almost the unlikeliest possible game to compose character-based fan Fiction for, with the possible exceptions of Pong ™ and Tetris™ *. **

**(Editor's note: strange though it may seem, both Tetris and Pong Fan Fictions really do exist.)**

**Her mate waved a green feather-hand dismissively. "Just… zero tolerance, in general. Anyway, I was out with my squadron, picnicking amongst our Atlas E silos… like great long big stone boxes lying on their sides, long enough to hold the trunk of the biggest fallen forest tree you ever saw."**

** Brandi and Candi nodded, eyes wide in rapt attention. **

** "Then the call to action came in. Heroically I picked up the telephone! With the speed of a sprinting stenographer my brave decoding crews filled in lots of random code letters in their notebooks and skilfully compared them! With breath-taking precision I turned the keys! And then… there's a reason I always played, I mean used the Atlas E, kiddies. Style, that's what it's all about. Retro style. They called them 'coffin birds' for a reason, we stored the missiles horizontal buried in sand. It was quite a sight to see – the long doors opening, the sand pouring away and those great gleaming shapes steadily coming upright on their erector launchers..."**

** Margot suppressed a snicker; she had that image quite clear in her mind. In more ways than one, Plucky had never seen it.**

** "Daddy?" Candi nudged her father. Plucky was staring, his expression far-away as he thought nostalgically of paper-thin balloon fuel tanks and gimballing engine nozzle slip-rings.**

** Suddenly Plucky grabbed the digging-stick from the unloaded tools and stores by the door, and began frantically to excavate the floor of the hut.**

** Margot raised an eyebrow. "Do finish the story, Plucky. We've got all night. The gold will still be there, and it's not going anywhere in a hurry. Neither are we." She wished now they had grabbed the chicks and headed out the first morning the snow had fallen; they might have got away in time then.**

** "It's not that – well, mostly not that," Plucky panted. "A-ha!" He reached down, and picked up a dirt-encrusted crystal from the hole. "I'd forgotten these. Remembering the Atlas E's coming out of the earth reminded me.""**

** "Mmm. Another souvenir of home. For what good it'll do us." Margot remembered the crystals that Shirley had planted under their original nest; she had had strange dreams about them. They had been buried under the Summer hut two years ago, and almost forgotten.**

** "As we used to say when we fired off our heroic Atlas E's towards the evil empire outpost at Paris Euro-Dingy, it's a long shot. It's a long shot, but it just might work." Plucky scraped the dirt off four pencil-sized crystals, and handed one apiece to his family. "Trust me; I saw this work on TV once. And now's the time we really, really need it to work." He pulled out the rawhide sack of gold nuggets from the hole, strapped it onto his back and wrapped his arms around his family. "Margot – think of Acme Acres, the good bits – and think hard – '**_**there's no place like home**_**.****'"**

**Margot shrugged, but as she took the crystal the memories of those dreams came back to her. She imagined the wonderful taste of an unsustainably sourced FoulPlay Skinny Latte – or better still, a Morbidly Obese Mocha. She closed her eyes, holding onto Plucky and their chicks tight, and thought, with all the power and determination she possessed.**

* * *

**Far away on an exotic, improbable timeline with laws of physics whose finely-tuned universal constants permitted the eventual rise of video games and fan fiction writers, Lieutenant Shirley McLoon was returning from another mission with Unit Four Plus Two, her Unnatural Forces taskforce. It was a tough job but a rewarding one; her team of Combat Mystics had never yet failed to save the world from destruction. Tonight they were returning to base after a week away in San Francisco tackling a renegade cult of New-Age holistic assassins. ***

** Shirley yawned. "Like, total bummer, man, these cross-country trips are mondo stressing out my biorhythms." She looked around the insides of the dimly lit bus; almost all the team were asleep already.**

** She relaxed, smoothing her jagged brain-waves into more harmonious forms as the Number 51 Assault Bus motored steadily through sleeping suburbs. Suddenly her aura felt a great disturbance in the Farce, as a powerful spell broke the boundaries between realities. **

"**What's going on?" Shirley asked the blue-glowing figure. Recently she had been growing more estranged from her aura, since discovering it was not a part of herself as much as sh****e had always believed.**

_**I recognise that spell. So should you. You cast it, then like put it on Plucky's shelf, waiting for it to be triggered. Remember enchanting those power crystals we put under our nest? The Oz tech Red Shoes 'no place like home' spell?**_** Her aura raised an aetherial eyebrow. **

**A white loon's head feathers stiffened in surprise as she understood. "Like wow. Fer sure. Plucky, our chicks and Margot– they're back."**

** (*) The average citizen usually looked in the phone book to hire an assassin to make some problem person permanently stop troubling them. Holistic assassins not only terminate the target they're given – they make the customer's whole problem go away…**

**End Chapter One**


	2. Chapter 2

**(Editor's note: Gladys and Gracie appear in the original TV series, in the "Re-return Of The Toxic Revenger". They're Plucky's neighbours – and despite being just as pretty as Shirley, Plucky doesn't make a pass at them. There had to be a reason for that. And Plucky wore a maid outfit in "Journey to the centre of Acme Acres".)**

**Chapter 2 **

**Snow lay deep on the hills around Acme Acres, except in the wetlands around Lake Acme and the surrounding swamps where the deep, dark water would take another week to freeze. A little way from the water's edge was a tenement where many of the swamp-dwellers retreated to when the weather got too severe for open nests and the like. Thick, wet snow plastered its roof and rusty fire escape.**

** "It looks just awful out there." A duck girl with a long tress of curly reddish head-feathers stared out of the window at the grey afternoon, now shading into night. "Our poor nest must be covered over by now, like it was never there. It'll be flattened by all that slush."**

** "We'll rebuild it in spring, Gracie." A blonde head-feathered duck girl, another plain pure-stock avian, stood by her side. **

** Gracie nuzzled her yellow bill with her own matching one. "We always do, Gladys. But no matter what we do, it stays empty." Gracie looked up at the low cloud; there was no visible air traffic today, or any stork activity. This time of year was a natural lull, with the big surge of stork deliveries timed for Christmas for maximum dramatic effect.**

** "Maybe next Spring our luck will change. It really can happen for us. It worked for Mrs Rhubella LaFume after all – she's such a lucky girl." Gladys stroked her partner's white tail-feathers reassuringly. **

** Gracie sighed. "We can provide everything else we need to look after ducklings, if only the stork ever came this way – we've got such a quiet life. A nice open-air nest every year in Summer, and back here when it gets too cold." She cast a glance around the narrow flat. "It's not much, but we can still just afford it."**

** Gladys nodded. She held Gracie's feather-hand, their feather-fingers intermeshing. "I sometimes wish we could have gone to Acme Loo where all the excitement is – but there we'd be extras at best. They only want Toons who can become top film-stars – like Plucky."**

** "I hope he's all right. Shirley said their eggs hatched out without her. I was so looking forward to seeing them. I loved nest-sitting, even while they were eggs. Hatchlings would be so much better." Gracie said. "Nothing adventurous ever seems to happen to us." There was a long silence, as they stared out into the darkening evening.**

** Just at that dramatically perfect moment, the doorbell rang. The couple went to the door together and opened it. A pair of duck lower bills hit the floor with a clang in a classic Toon Take that could certainly have got them past Acme Looniversity auditions. "Plucky?" Gracie and Gladys gasped in sync.**

** The snow-covered drake grinned up at an equally frosted mallard, who was brushing down a pair of waist-high chicks, clad in roughly sewn animal hides still caked in snow. "Hey! Told you so, Margot. Even after all these years, they're still at the old place for the Winter!"**

** Gladys' eyes went wide, looking at Plucky. The drake had evidently been doing some serious gym work in the last three months. "Plucky… what do you mean, years? And who are these lovely ducklings? Are they your nieces? I never you knew had any."**

** Margot raised an eyebrow. "Nieces? These are the eggs we were all sitting on four years ago, last time we saw civilisation. Meet Brandi and Candi. Our daughters." She put a protective feather-hand on a shoulder of each of the chicks, and beamed with pride.**

** Gladys and Gracie blinked, almost in sync, looking at the formidable mallard, a necklace of huge claws around her neck on a rawhide thong and a powerful hunting bow slung over her back. "Four years? You'd better come in," Gracie whispered. "I can see we're all going to have to sit down for a shock or two."**

** Ten minutes later, with the aid of the television news and the daily newspaper just delivered, Margot had been convinced of the current date and was radiating a mix of relief and fury that would have certainly earned her a passing grade at Acme Looniversity' s Dramatic Expressions 701 advanced class.**

** "That loon! I knew she really dropped us in it. But this!" Her purple head-feathers bristled. "You know the worst of it? Shirley knew exactly where we were all the time – and just what the 'Time' warp was. She even went over to gloat at us when we were fast asleep. Let us stew in the back pages of History. Sure, she gave us the crystals that could get us back… but she DIDN'T TELL US!" Margot fumed impressively, virulently corrosive yellow-green vapour rising around her. "I bet she laughed all the way back to civilisation."**

** Plucky sat rigid, overwhelmed. "We had those weird dreams about the crystals, sure enough – but she could have just left us a note. How hard was that? Or even drawn in the mud – '**_**wish hard and you can come home, right now**_**'. We'd have been back in time for the twins' first birthday. They've never had a birthday cake, thanks to her. They've never had cake, or bread, even." The memory that Shirley mostly worked by prophetic dreams and omens (and would have considered them far more convincing than any dull material note) was faded four eventful years in his past.**

** Margot hugged her mallard mate. "For what it's worth – looks like you've not missed out on the Zombie Apocalypse." She looked down at the newspaper; the same old stories seemed to feature, with only the names updated. "You've still that to look forward to… if that's the right word." She looked through the headlines. "No word yet of any all-out thermonuclear exchange between rival girl scout troops. No Doom Robots invading from the Future either… though this is California, maybe just nobody's noticed."**

** "Oh my." Gracie looked on wide-eyed at the mallard family on her couch, as Gladys came in with a steaming pot of coffee and a large plate of cookies. "Shirley told us she'd had to send you away because that energy vampire was after you. That's true – and we know she can't lie. She just can't."**

** "Right," Margot said sarcastically. "Fine. She set it up so she didn't have to lie. She sent us away to start with to save the eggs, fair enough. Something pretty nasty certainly turned up, and we got away from it. Fine. But she didn't bring us back when it was safe, did she?"**

** Gladys shook her head wordlessly. She poured the coffee, noticing how Plucky and Margot almost went into ecstatic shock as the scent hit their bills. "It's only instant. UnHappy Shopper brand, I'm afraid. It's all we've got," she said apologetically.**

** Margot sipped the steaming mug, closed her eyes and let out a shuddering sigh. "Oh, how long it's been since I tasted coffee. How very, very long. I dreamed of drinking the best FoulPlay brands, with twenty percent extra harvest-time gratuitous cruelty… but this will do as well. It will really do."**

** Plucky broke a cookie and offered half each to his daughters. "It's food, kiddies! Real food! It's terrific!"**

** Brandi and Candi sniffed it cautiously. **

** "What tree does this grow on, Daddy?" Candi looked up at her father.**

** Plucky smiled, patting her head-feathers. "Food here doesn't come from animals and plants, sweetie. Proper food is made by supermarkets and sold to you personally by prime-time television advertising campaigns. Oh, you'll have so much fun exploring everything! It's a whole new world."**

** The chicks dutifully ate the cookies, while their beaming father looked on with pride.**

** "Daddy?" Brandi looked up at him, her eyes troubled. "It's got no Manitou."**

** Plucky blinked. "Say what?" **

** Margot raised an eyebrow. "I remember. It's from something Running Bare was teaching them last Summer. It's a life-force thing."**

"**Oh. Prana, mojo, all that Shirley stuff. That's OK kiddies, food here doesn't have all that stuff." Plucky looked at the packet, avidly reading the ingredients. "Ah. Good old corn Syrup substitute. Invert sugar. Partially hydrogenated trans-fats. Synthetic cinnamon flavouring. Permitted artificial colouring, flavour and texture enhancers. How I've missed you!" He grabbed a handful and crunched messily, an expression of pure bliss on his bill..**

** Candi looked on, a disapproving expression on her small face. "Can we go fish instead, Daddy?"**

** Plucky chuckled, looking at Gladys and Gracie. "Can you believe that? They'd rather hunt than buy. They've been brought up with no brand loyalty. They've never even heard of product brands. They've never seen a television advert – or a television, either! There's so much for them to learn, now we're back!"**

** "Hmm." Margot thought deeply. "You know, I'm not sure we should jump right in and tell everyone we're back, right away. There's a lot we need to do, that we can do best quietly. I've got to check on my money. It should be safe – my lawyers had standing instructions and protective clauses that kick in, in the event I vanished. Toons do, sometimes. Some leave the planet entirely without telling anyone or go into video freeze-frame for tax reasons."**

** "It's a good thing it's not been four years here," Gracie nodded. "Everyone knows you had to get away from the energy vampire. He was wiped out, we heard. But Shirley said you were all right where you were."**

** "Oh, I'll bet. So nobody hassled her to bring us back." Margot's eyes flashed dangerously. **_**Right, so maybe Shirley can't lie. But she's learned to get around that little handicap**_**, she told herself. **_**We were 'all right' out there, were we? We could have starved – or ended up as someone's dinner. And she left us to it. But to save her precious karma she gave us a way back, to get her chicks back when we've done all the hard work of raising them. That must have been why she put us in a world where Time was running so fast.**_

**"Would you like to stay here tonight?" Gladys asked. "We've only this room – the only bed's in our bedroom, but there's cushions and spare blankets." The meagre flat comprised the one living room they were in, a bedroom, tiny kitchen and bathroom – and that was it. There was not even a hallway; the door to the public corridor opened straight into the living room.**

** Margot suddenly laughed. She waved a feather-hand at the thin nylon carpet on the floor, the lukewarm radiator and the windows shielding them from the snowy night outside. "If you'd been living where we have – the idea of sleeping on that clean floor in the warm under a roof that doesn't leak, with electric light from the switch and hot water in the bath taps – you'd think that's luxury. Thank you!" She carefully unstrung her longbow and stood it in the corner by the coat rack, hanging up her quiver of obsidian tipped broadhead hunting arrows next to Gladys and Gracie's yellow waterproofs. **_**Ducks needing waterproofs,**_** she thought with heavy irony **_**definitely a Toon thing.**_

**"Bath." Plucky's eyes bulged. "Hot water. Soap. I never knew how much I'd miss it." He hesitated. "But first… if it's a treat for me – imagine what it'll be like for Brandi and Candi."**

** "We'll see." Margot looked around, seeing the basic tenement apartment with new eyes. To her daughters, being here would be something like being picked up by a UFO – every experience alien, from the carpet to the light-bulbs. The chicks had had a perfectly complete life, fitting into the world they had hatched in. "Certainly it'll be an experience."**

** An hour later, the twins were bathed and put to bed on pillows in the corner of the living room, swathed in Gracie's spare blankets. Margot had noticed on the bottom shelf of the bathroom cupboard the blankets came out of, a set of much smaller clothes and towels, obviously unused and still waiting hopefully in their wrappers.**

** "Mmmm." Margot cast an appraising eye at the cupboard and its supply of feather soaps and oils as she and Plucky ran the bath. It was not the swimming-deep hot tub she had dreamed about for so long, but it would certainly do to be going on with. "So, this is where all the swamp dwellers go when the lake freezes over?" She weighed up a bottle of scented baby oil thoughtfully.**

** Plucky nodded, marvelling at familiar soap and feather shampoo brand names on the shelves, and recalling the advertising jingles nostalgically. "Sure! I built a reed hut or an open nest in the swamp every Spring I was at Acme Loo. If I wasn't already working in Hollywood by now I'd have rented one of the rooms in this block in October, like always. That's how I knew Gladys and Gracie might be here. We always did the same things, we were neighbours every Winter. It's cheap." They had materialised at the site of Plucky's old nest, and half an hour slogging through the wet snow in the fading light had brought them to the first electric lit building on the edge of the drier land. By then, Plucky had been relieved to spot they had arrived in the right version of history when the clouds had briefly cleared to show the familiar sight of air traffic heading in towards Acme Acres airport, and the unmistakable blue-white streak of an Intercontinental Ballistic Anvil arcing down from space to provide a suitably heavyweight punch-line for some distant gag scene.**

** Margot snickered. "You've got fifty pounds of untraceable gold, Plucky. You're an independently wealthy drake now. A mallard of means. You could buy this whole place outright."**

** Plucky's eyes bulged again. "I'd not thought about it. Not what to do with it. It's been so long since we could spend anything."**

** "Well, we're out of the woods now – in more ways than one. We have to decide what we want to do next." Her eyes flashed, and she stepped out of her rather rank furs. Her bill wrinkled slightly; in the small, centrally heated room, the untanned hides were becoming a liability in more ways than just overheating. The smell had not been too obvious in a cold and draughty hut, and unlike Gladys and Gracie she had long since got used to it. "I'm going to start by getting really clean." She turned to look coyly at Plucky over her shoulder. "Then – we'll see about getting my feathers ruffled all over again."**

**In the room next door, Gladys and Gracie could not miss the sounds coming through the thin wall a few minutes later.**

** Gracie sat on her bed in her night-gown, self-consciously combing her curled blonde head-feathers that fell down to her shoulders. She gave a wan smile, inclining her head towards the wall. "They seem a… very loving couple."**

** Gladys nodded, sitting next to her. "Margot looks just incredible. When she strode in with that longbow on her back, she looked a real Warrior Queen. She looks like she can take on the world."**

** "She already has – and won. From what they were saying, they've been up against everything that world could throw at them." Gracie closed her eyes, letting out a deep sigh. "And her figure. She looks gorgeous. I was brought by the stork like all my family, but – she's managing the hard way."**

** Gladys blushed through her feathers. "Same as Shirley did. But Shirley's an egg-layer. I don't think Margot's going to lay eggs, even if she's got feathers and a bill. That's a really weird idea."**

** "I keep thinking about it. Margot looks Toony enough for a stork to visit. But she looks happy the way things are. Her figure. Oh wow." Gracie's eyes crossed, contemplating. Both purebred avians wore mammal-style bikinis while swimming around in Summer, but that was purely social convention as much as Gracie's pink head-feathers ribbon; what with Toon concealment and avian bodies they had nothing visible underneath to be seen. "I think she must have… fed Brandi and Candi herself. I've never envied a mammal before but looking at her… just, wow."**

** "You're just right as you are," Gladys reassured her. "We're exactly how we should be." Her feather-hand stroked her partner's tail-feathers. "This is something Margot hasn't got. Without a tail I think she can't fly, either." **

** "Here's something I know she can do." Gracie kissed Gladys' bill, and there was a quiet stereo pop as they both unconcealed. "So can we."**

** The snowy night outside settled on the swamplands, but everybody in Flat 19 was too busy to be watching it.**

* * *

**Plucky Duck awoke at dawn with a sensation that had been unfamiliar for weeks – warm feet. He rolled over, still half asleep, and felt the unmistakable texture of carpet on his bill. His eyes popped wide open, and for a few seconds he stared around at the narrow room – which was still twice the size of any hut he and Margot had built, and far less draughty.**

** "Woo-hoo-hoo!" His eyes went wide. "We're back! We're really back! It wasn't a dream!"**

** "Mmm. No arguing there," Margot's voice came from behind him.**

** Plucky turned to see Margot carrying in Gladys and Gracie's biggest tray, laden with breakfast. The smell of hot coffee wafted invitingly from it. "That smells great!"**

** "No arguing on that one, either," Margot sat on the floor next to him, rearranging the chair cushions that had made their makeshift bed. "The food makes a change from spit-roast squirrel, too. It's just tinned sardines in tomato sauce on toast – that's all they've got in the cupboard. I mostly cleaned them out, too." She stroked her mallard mate's bill. "So… here we are."**

** "Oh boy. The things I've missed." Plucky's eyes went misty, but not before he grabbed a coffee and a plate of hot sardines on toast. "And now we're rich. We can do anything!"**

** Margot raised an eyebrow. She liked seeing Plucky happy – that condition would unfortunately end in about ten minutes when she pointed out his next job, of toilet-training their daughters. They would be waking up soon, and had a lot to learn of basic indoor living. "Yes… we've got a lot to do. Find out what we missed, for a start. My T-pad survived our exile; I've got it charging up in the kitchen right now. See what my lawyers and investment Toons have been doing."**

** Plucky nodded. Four years was a long time. "I almost forgot – you said you weren't poor after all. I'd got it in my head for so long that you were, turning up at the swamp like you did."**

** "We'll see. Whatever else happens, at least we've got this." She patted the rawhide sack holding fifty pounds in gold nuggets. True, it included a fair amount of quartz, and without being able to say just where it came from they could not exactly cash it in as soon as the banks opened – but she had not forgotten what Perfecto taught had her about getting round little inconveniences like that.**

* * *

**Although she had heard about her return from Fifi (who had been told by Shirley), it was still a shock for Rhubella LaFume to meet Margot after so long away – even more so to see the changes in her that four years had made – and especially the last few months. The scene that Friday was a coffee-house at the edge of Acme Acres; Margot had been loaned a bright yellow rain poncho that was decidedly snug on her. Underneath, there was a freshly bought and rather more fashionable outfit that had not been crafted by hand in a reed hut on any Toon's timeline.**

** Rhubella looked her old Perfecto comrade up and down. There was no denying that Margot cut an imposing figure. Her coffee-bean nose twitched; as well as clothing Margot had evidently resupplied with some non-essentials in the three days since her return. "You scent of orange sauce. Your old favourite. Very few ducks can get away with wearing orange water perfume."**

** Margot looked at her in return, as she savoured her expensive Old Government Java coffee. "Believe me, you wouldn't like the scent of the uncured animal hides I've been modelling recently." She paused. "It feels weird – all that time passed for me, and you're still awaiting the same stork that hasn't got round to you yet. I'm slowly catching up on the things I've been missing." She shrugged. "Not everything. No brandy for a couple of months. Not while I'm in what they used to call 'an interesting condition.' But this isn't perfume – it really is orange sauce. You should see Plucky's… reaction to duck in orange sauce." Her eyes flashed. "He says I have excellent taste – in more ways than one."**

** "You always were the one to accessorise," Rhubella said. "I don't know anyone else in Perfecto who subscribed to the Adult supplement to the Acme catalogue. And boasted about it."**

"**Mmm." Margot closed her eyes, recalling various exotic situations. "What I got from there was no more reliable than the usual Acme range, but even when they went wrong, I often rather enjoyed some of the more… bizarre consequences. There were some amazing scenes. Things happened that even I couldn't have planned deliberately."**

"**And when Acme products fail that way, it tends to be bizarre," Rhubella said. "Or as you call it, sophisticated."**

**The mallard laughed, throwing back her riot of purple head-feathers. "Well, why not? It's hard to be sophisticated in a reed hut. Hardly surprising I've thought of a few things I'd like to do that need a few props. Four years is a long time." She paused. "Three months isn't exactly a blink either. I've been catching up on my investments."**

** "How are they doing?" Rhubella asked, interested. "I've been keeping track for you as far as I could. You vanished just when everything was starting to go into production. I've seen Corona advertised, in the more exclusive places. It's the first really new vice in a hundred years, since Toons discovered the thrill of driving like a maniac." That had created welcome employment amongst Maniacs; police forces round the world had retained the services of professionally accredited Maniacs as expert witnesses in traffic cases ever since.**

** "The Corona Project is already yielding some very respectable profits – and I didn't have to be around to pick them up. They just sat there growing compound interest; being off three months wasn't as much a disaster as I thought." Margot smiled, relaxing. "For that matter… at least you can say I've saved three months living expenses, or four years for that matter. And I've got myself an Olympic class athletic form for free, better than any gym or personal trainer could."**

** "Spoken like a true Perfecto. We can find a financial edge anywhere. Squeeze the profit out of a profiterole." Rhubella smirked; just for a second, she found herself slipping back into her old ways. "You're staying with Gladys and Gracie?"**

** "Yes. Until we get settled. There's a big property in Acme Forest I'm looking at buying – it's on its own, very wild surroundings… around there it's more like the chicks have been used to, and for later on there's room for a big family." Margot said. "The old Crowninshield place. It's the only abandoned house of its kind around here that's not haunted."**

** Rhubella nodded. "I know it. It'll take a lot of looking after, though. A lot more than a reed hut."**

** "I have ideas." Margot leaned back in her comfortable chair, glad it was not a log or a rock as all the furniture in the past four years had been. "And how about this? When I got my T-pad recharged and waded through a gazillion T-mails, there was one from the film studio in Oregon that back in September wanted to see Plucky – they didn't even know we'd gone! They apologised to us for not getting in touch; they'd had a fire and they're just getting on their feet again. They really want to see him. I think they'll love his new figure. I know I do."**

** "You can say he's been working out every day for three months," Rhubella mused. "It's true enough. You needn't mention the other three and three-quarter years. It'd just complicate his resume."**

** "We've been invited to camp on Gladys and Gracie's floor for as long as we like. I think we'll take that offer up for a while. I could check us into the swishiest hotel in Acme Acres right away, but… it feels like too much too soon." Margot looked troubled for a second. "Plucky's more concerned they've 4 years of watching TV to catch up on, but… I'm not sure they need that. Any of that."**

** "Gladys and Gracie have done you a lot of good," Rhubella said, her eyes narrowing slightly. "I hope you'll make it up to them."**

** "I have ideas there too." Margot smoothed her feathers. "When I was away, I had plenty of time to think about how to repay them. Money, of course, but Gracie said she'd not care what sort of nest she and Gladys have – only what was in it. They've been together four years, and… well, you're the living proof you can get a stork that way! They haven't." She winked. "Not through want of trying."**

"**I know it takes a lot more than a partner's chromoplasm. It takes the conceptual energy of a really dramatic scene, to get a new Toon on the way," Rhubella stroked her stork feather. "And you can't plan for that. The harder you try, the smaller the chance."**

"**Conceptual energy. I like that idea." Margot nodded thoughtfully. "I like the practical side too. Explains why so many Toon girls get lucky the first time. Or unlucky, depending on whichever's more dramatic."**

"**Like Babs says – most accidents are caused by people, and visa-versa." Rhubella agreed. Rabbits with one particular meme aside, the Plot Balance of Nature made up for Toon longevity and agelessness with far lower fertility than strictly DNA based life-forms. Even Babs' mother had waited six years between her first child and the wandering meme that had found her; but for that meme Babs would almost certainly have stayed an only child like most of her classmates.**

** "I'll say. We had a few dramas before we got one big enough to do the job. You should have seen that direwolf! He'd trailed us through the forest for two days. Must have finally got hungry, he dropped the subtle approach and came straight at us in broad daylight. Bad plan on his part. It took us four arrows and some good spear work from Plucky, but we brought him down." Margot's eyes gleamed at the memories. "That was a mess! Like Plucky says, 'real horror-show'."**

"**Seven months ago on your time, or I miss my guess," Rhubella studied her friend.**

"**Bang on. And that's not the only bang that hit the target. I was fired up like you wouldn't believe, when we managed to live through that one. Jumped Plucky's feathers, right there on the spot. That worked." She patted her swelling feathered body happily. "That isn't my only little souvenir of that close encounter. I've got a fur coat you won't buy the like of in Hollywood, and a very exclusive direwolf-claw necklace too." Margot snickered. "I bet all the environmental types around here are going to raise a howl when they see me wearing it. Extinct species and all."**

**"And you say Plucky's come back with fifty pounds of legally untraceable gold nuggets? I expect that's made him happy." Rhubella paused. "That'd be enough to put half a dozen kids through Perfecto, if you wanted to send them there."**

** Margot raised an eyebrow. "He does have to support a growing family – well, I'm certainly growing. And I'm not the only one; I've seen Fifi. She looks 'swell'. Looks like that meme's catching on around here. Bumps are 'in' this season."**

** Rhubella smiled. "Not just around Acme Acres. Elmyra's got a wall covered in pictures her old meme-group sent her – a collection of 'bunny-bumps' like you've never seen; it's got her green with envy. And I met Gogo Dodo and his fiancée in Japan. You could say she works in the aerospace industry. She's a milling machine."**

"**Oh, yes," Margot reminisced. "It's been a long time – for me – but I remember that dossier. He dated industrial machinery and household appliances. I never heard how any of them – responded."**

"**Believe it or not, this one really does." Rhubella said. "She's a million-dollar numerically controlled fabrication device that fills a whole room of the factory. You think a Perfecto girl would be a very high-maintenance partner? We're low-lifes next to her. She gets through a couple of pricey diamond-edged cutting tips every week, and runs on industrial 3-phase power. Lots of it. She can cold-forge six-inch bars of TiToonium alloy like squeezing toothpaste."**

**Margot laughed. "That Gogo's a brave bird. Sounds like he's got the sort of girl who… one little slip and she'd chew him up and spit him out."**

"**She's very happy, she says. Birds lay eggs, and she's doing the best she can. She's… laying in material for a production run. Now she's got his number." Rhubella thought back to their meeting. Some translation had been needed, the numerically controlled fabricator normally speaking via the internet in machine-code haiku verses. "Fifi and me, we've been on a sort of three-month extra honeymoon around the world. We had a regular one to France just after we married but I mean, why stop just while you're enjoying it? And Japan was fun, if weird."**

"**It'd have to be," Margot reminisced. "And not just for finding a hot mechanical date. I remember, Gogo has to stay near a high-potential weirdness field to survive for long."**

**Rhubella nodded. "Japan IS one. Where else could a machine want to get umm, 'in production' by a Toon dodo?" It had been a strange sight watching the normally surreal Dodo going punctually to work six days a week for **_**Satawasa Gratuitously Heavy Industries (Evil) Incorporated**_** as a humble 'Salaryman'. Nobody could have ever imagined him loyally humming the corporate anthem and taking part in the synchronised group callisthenics in front of the sacred corporate logo every morning – but as Fifi had pointed out, that was the strangest thing he could possibly have done. Apparently, his employers had found that being officially registered as an Evil Mega-Corporation had legal advantages nowadays. Their hostile takeover bids were outstandingly brutal, and had been nominated several times for the Nobel Prize for Fiendish Ingenuity.**

** "Mmmm. Sounds fun. I notice Fifi's not wearing a stork feather. She's got the same free fashion accessory I have, in a smaller size. With two girls together, I always heard it's either go the stork route or enlist some hunky help." She winked. "So, you've been all round the world finding her local talent – and as far as cubs go, it's **_**may the best man win**_**?" Margot raised an eyebrow.**

"**Oh, yes." Rhubella's eyes crossed at the memory. "Last week we were in Botswana on safari. No real skunks there, but we met a few Ratels. They're black and white; near enough to get Fifi's tail fuming." She paused. "I read once that people keep seeing faces in clouds and everywhere because there's a special bit of everyone's brain that's hard-wired just to spot faces. With skunkettes, there's another bit that spots stripes and two-tone fur. You can practically hear the switch click."**

** "Ratels. We knew one at Perfecto, remember? That big Exchange Student, he was in the seniors when we were first-years. Tough toon. Lots of stamina. Good choice." Margot nodded appreciatively. "Me and Plucky – well, I'd think have stuck with him anyway, even if we'd stayed in this Acme Acres. He makes me laugh. And his having picked up those Tantric techniques from Shirley certainly helped pass those long Winter evenings." Her expression hardened. "How is that loon? I've got a bone to pick with her, and maybe a tail to pluck. Bald."**

** Rhubella winced. "You know, she really didn't plan on marooning anybody in time? She didn't mean you to be there at all."**

** "Oh, I'll just bet she didn't." Margot said, a fiery glint in her eye. "What, leaving me all alone with her nest-mate? She deserved to lose him. She didn't even bother marrying him first. Or even getting engaged. Her loss."**

** Rhubella's naked tail swished. "She didn't mean Plucky to be there either. Not where you ended up, time-warped forward. If things had turned out to plan, as far as Plucky'd ever have known he'd have just sat safe in an empty landscape for a day or so, then Shirley'd have picked him up with the eggs and brought them all home. She had to get him away in a hurry. There was an astral vampire on Plucky's trail."**

** "We've had bears, direwolves, sabre-toothed tigers, wolverines and cougars on ours already, where she sent us." Margot's gaze was level. "If it wasn't for that 'sniffer' danger sensor of mine – and my having specified a solar charger on it – we wouldn't have lasted a month."**

** "Well. You managed to get back, anyway. And that was using the spell she'd given you. She didn't have to give you that. Now what?" Rhubella looked at her Perfecto comrade, noting Margot's powerful, toned figure. An open-air life had done her no harm by the look of it. "Plan hideous revenge on Shirley?"**

** "My thoughts exactly. Thanks to that loon, I've had four years without foul-play coffee to think about it." Margot stretched, a look of delicious anticipation on her face. "Remember our Ethics classes, and what they taught us at Perfecto? Vengeance is a dish best served cold. Four winters in hand-built huts with no central heating were so very cold. Two days ago, our time, it nearly deep-froze us all."**

"**You really are going to plan a hideous revenge for what she did – even though it was an accident?" Rhubella's tail twitched. She had hoped Margot would want to bury the hatchet, but evidently the purple mallard wanted to get a few good swings in with it first.**

**Margot threw her purple riot of head-feathers back, and laughed. "Oh yes. It'll be a hideous one, all right. She thinks she's getting her precious mate back? Oh, no. I'm going to marry that drake, right in front of her eyes, full formal church wedding and all the trimmings. And Shirley's going to be invited - as my bridesmaid." Margot took a deep breath, concentrated and spin-changed into a white wedding gown.**

"**You can spin-change!" Rhubella's eyes went wide. "You're probably the second Perfecto who's ever learned that. Fifi taught me." Perfecto had always collectively looked down its nose and sneered at cheap Toon tricks like that.**

"**And Plucky taught me. We had time. Lots of time." Margot snickered. "I've seen every form he's ever taken. The ones he wants to go on-screen in, like the Toxic Revenger – and the ones he doesn't. Back at Acme Loo, one time the day's plot called for him in drag, as Babs' maid Skylar. In full French-maid costume. A lovely redhead." After a late night watching horror films Plucky had been late for the casting call at the studio that day, which let the ever-punctual Hamton bag the less embarrassing and more prestigious butler position to Babs and Buster's Vanderbunny characters.**

"**Skylar? Dumb name." Rhubella mused "And I doubt he liked the role much either." Unlike Acme Loo's Professor Bugs Bunny, neither Professor Daffy or his protégé Plucky were at all happy in skirts.**

**Margot winked. "I had him reprise it for me a few times. Command performance, you might say." She gave a dramatic mock sigh. "Oh, poor sweet maid Skylar – you should have seen just what her wicked, wicked Mistress thought up for her." Her hard-to-explain avian teeth flashed in a grin. "It's a good thing they didn't seem to do stork deliveries over there – it'd have been something to see the look on 'Skylar's' bill if a stork feather came floating down for 'her' the next day. And with what I thought up, it could have happened. It worked for you! Skylar, 'she' looked cute in the maid outfit." What with Toons being mostly what they appeared to be, at that particular time Plucky had not exactly been a male mallard in drag – confusing enough at any rate to potentially summon one of the (notoriously easily confused) storks to the scene.**

** "I'd guess you missed wearing high-fashion clothes, where you were," Rhubella said. "Spin-change outfits are handy for a quick gag but not like the real thing. Get distracted too much and – poof, they're gone." She smiled at one memory. "I remember you spent eight grand on that skirt-suit from a major name in Connecticut. You had the costumier flown in to Acme Acres to fit it. And you only wore it to one party."**

** "Yes, didn't I? I think it's still hanging up in a wardrobe somewhere… and you know, right now I can't even remember where that wardrobe is. And anyway, now it wouldn't fit." Margot laughed. "Where I've been, untanned hides are the 'in thing' of their millennium. They're not going to be moving on to high technology like woollen homespun any time soon."**

** "And… you have to wear outfits now, you said?" Rhubella scratched her head-fur in puzzlement. "What's all that about? You used to 'conceal'. Not that you ever walked around in class with your tail-feathers hanging out like Plucky and Shirley did, but you could have."**

"**Oh yes. I remember at Perfecto, everyone pointed out, with a designer sneer, how any peasant could walk around in their bare fur or feathers using Toon concealment. Only those with the right social standing get on the client list of approved costumiers" Margot said.**

**Rhubella nodded. Looking at the changes Nature and Margot's focussed Will had made to the mallard's figure, some costumier had an interesting job in store if she was going to make any public appearances without reminding folk of Clarabelle Cow's earliest model sheets. "You look… optimized. To feed a hungry family. But you could have unconcealed to do that."**

** The purple mallard shrugged. "I'd always heard a Toon can choose to give up that feature, if she really wants. I wanted." She closed her eyes, remembering the convenience of not having to "unconceal" half asleep when Brandi and Candi wanted to nurse in the night. She smiled at the memory. "Over there, the only local Toon tribe we met, they didn't 'conceal' at all, except for their religious ceremonies. Running Bare was their shaman, a hawk hunk… he was quite a sight. Fine feathers." She caught Rhubella's expression, and winked. "Oh, all I did was admire the view. A fine view it was, too. Even though I've not yet technically said 'forsaking all others' anywhere official, it's been just Plucky for me on the nest." **

"**You always were a stickler for the fine legal print," Rhubella mused. "Then – if you don't watch out, it'll get you every time. How is Plucky?"**

"**He fills all my needs. Very nicely." The maternally morphed mallard snickered. "And I have needs where that purebred loon doesn't even have possibilities." She shrugged. "Right now he's busy with Brandi and Candi, trying to persuade them of the joys of television. They've got a lot of talent – they keep spotting what's not true. It's not an advantage when watching the politicians."**

** Rhubella smiled. "I can see Plucky's going to get upset about that. Daughters of his who really don't like watching TV – that's his idea of a Problem Child."**

** Margot gave a mock sigh. "Oh, yes. Our poor deprived chicks. He thinks they're clinically video-game deficient. Plucky's got a big job ahead of him, teaching them to properly enjoy Retro Rocket Rumble. You know his idea of the ultimate game thrill? Salvo a whole field of ICBMs over open sights, point-blank range." She laughed, spotting the expression on Rhubella's face. "Yes, I know. It's a good thing he's more into Applied Biology, particularly mine. Seems like physics never was his strong point." **

* * *

**Although they presumably did not know it, the chicks were on the minds of a lot of Toons in Acme Acres. Up in the woods on the slopes of Mount Acme, the McLoon family home stood out conspicuously – in architectural style it was several centuries earlier than anything else in the whole state, and exactly how it had got there from the backwoods in the hills above BosToon was an interesting story. **

** Melicent McLoon sat on her nest in the cosy kitchen, idly leafing through a collection of ancient and not-so-ancient manuscripts she had bought as a job lot on her last visit to the library of the MiskaToonic University. They were in various styles of handwriting, on lined paper or centuried parchment, and their authors had written in anything from wax crayon to blood. The contents were the usual mix of the ravings of crazed madmen, inspired dreamers and modern cosmologists that the neo-eldritch University had sold off by the crate-full to clear some shelf room.**

** Just then the unlocked kitchen door blew open and a gust of wind whirled through the kitchen, depositing the unread papers in an untidy heap on the floor.**

** Melicent clicked her bill in annoyance, getting up from the egg she was sitting on, and went over to close the door. When she turned round again, something had happened to the papers. As if they were parts of a multi-layered combination lock, apparently random letters from different papers suddenly glowed brightly through now-transparent layers, revealing a hidden verse that Melicent hastily copied down on her kitchen notebook next to a non-vegetarian (but certainly egg-free) cake recipe and an invocation to summon a friendly denizen of the seventh dimension. **_**Buster Pseudopod and his unfeasibly large tentacles,**_** Melicent mused, **_**an Entity who's proving very popular in Japan…**_

**A minute after she had copied it the inscription faded. Melicent shook her head, and tidied the papers up again on the table. "Third time this week that's happened," she remarked idly, and turned to put her notebook back on the shelf next to all the others. And stopped. As she carefully re-read the verse, her eyebrows raised and her feathers fluffed out as she realised that unlike the others, this prophecy was just a little close to home.**

* * *

**That lunchtime saw Unit Four Plus Two gathered at their new local top-secret headquarters, the main showroom of an Army Surplus store in the centre of Acme Acres. It was a place where passers-by were not surprised to see Toons in nondescript military garb going in and out without raising suspicion.**

** "Hah. Organic wholegrain quinoa and free-range Spirulina, my favourite," Shirley's eyes lit up as she opened her ration packs and saw what the day's luck had brought her. "This is so cleansing to the chakras."**

** "Fer sure. And I bet yours need a good scrub, with lye and a stiff wire brush." Angelina Angelique reclined idly on a crate of official Korean-war 'Genuine issued Marine corps lingerie'. She fished out her own MRE. "So cool! I got the same as Tlalocopa – goat's blood." She smiled at the Mexican Chupacabra, who was intently examining a store display of assorted combat/survival sporks.**

"**Ewww. That's radically uncool," Shirley's beak wrinkled in disgust.**

** Angelina sniggered. "Listen to her. She's actually trying to talk to us about cool… like she knew anything about it. As if! This, from someone who doesn't have a single piercing. Not even through her eyeballs."**

** "And she calls us 'un-holy' – that, from someone with no designer perforations," Calgari said.**

** "Like, neither do you. I've seen your grody two-tone feathers in the shower, remember? All of them, worse luck. Like, gah." Shirley shuddered at the memory. "Totally put me off my miso and fair-trade seaweed salad."**

** The magpie smirked. "Much you know. Pity Colonel Fenix is so sadly prejudiced about the rad fifteen-inch fashion spikes all the "in crowd" are wearing this season, driven clean through their brains... but what he can't see won't hurt him." With a flourish, her feather-hand dived into her Toon pocket and pulled out a medical X-ray photograph. "Hey, Miss feathered fashion famine! Feast your eyes on this. Even you might learn something."**

** "Miracles happen," Calgari nodded. "There was that rain of blood over Peoria last week."**

** "Gross." Shirley's pale feathers turned a nauseous green as she studied the photo. "Internal razor-wire organ piercings. Liver, spleen, gall bladder. If it wasn't totally bad karma to wish any Toon bad luck, I'd hope airport Customs someday search you till they can see where all the metal's hidden."**

_**And they will, fer sure. We don't need to persuade them to do that duty**_**, her aura put in. **_**Remember poor Louise? Customs officials are so totally species prejudiced. Just because her father's a donkey, they like totally turn her inside-out every time she goes through airports, thinking she's a smuggling "mule"**_**…**

** Just then, Shirley felt a mental summons; she recognised the 'voice' as Colonel Fenix. **

_**We've another job to do,**_** the phoenix's mental voice broadcast to all the psychic members of his team. **_**There's a Number nineteen due in three minutes. Best get to the bus stop. I'll brief you all on-board.**_

**"Like, we're so out of here!" Shirley exclaimed. She helped Sergeant Gander collect the Unit's buzzards from around the store, and with the three graduates of Addams Academy sauntering casually behind them, Unit Four Plus Two queued at the bus stop. The air was rich with the scent of food; the surplus store was sandwiched between an 'Authentic Chinese Restaurant' on one side and a 'Fraudulent Lebanese Takeaway' on the other.**

** "Number Nineteen assault bus," Calgari spotted a bus weaving through the traffic. "Here it comes. Always there on time when we need it."**

** Sergeant Gander frowned slightly. "I'll have to have a word with the colonel about maintaining our cover," he said. "A bus that's always on time. A bit suspicious. Somebody might notice."**

**Half an hour later, they had cleared the suburbs of Acme Acres and were heading towards the coast. They had met up with a familiar vehicle, which was proving handy for clearing the traffic ahead of them.**

** "Are we nearly there yet?" Corporal Kaolin, one of the unit's buzzards, looked out of the window with wide, hopeful eyes.**

** Shirley cast a probing thought to the crew of the GRAVUS METALLICVS, the black spiky vehicle doubling as the Neo-Metal band's official tour bus and highly practical armoured fighting vehicle. For a few minutes she blissfully communed with the only backstage member of the band, Drogo DeVere, the male loon's harmonious thoughts meshing easily with her own.**

** Reluctantly, she broke contact at last and turned to her comrades – to call them 'friends' would have been pushing a point. "Drogo says the stars aren't right yet." To cope with various violations of laws of physics, the spiky vehicle carried a star-tracker as part of its navigation equipment for use when regular and gyro compass and GPS failed them.**

** "Just our luck having a fanatical Taoist navigating," Calgari mused, the raven sitting relaxed next to Angelina Angelique. He strummed his air guitar idly; the tender medieval tune of "Greensleeves" mutated into a Doom Metal anthem at his feather-fingers. "What's that classic line of wisdom they keep quoting? '**_**The Way that can be described, is not the true Way'**_**… no wonder we keep getting lost, following his directions."**

** "We do not, like, get lost," Shirley snapped. "We always find something that totally needs investigating – even if that wasn't always what we were looking for in the first place."**

** "Ah. Zen and the art of tracked vehicle maintenance. Taoist navigators," Calgari said, looking up innocently at the assault bus ceiling. "They don't take you anywhere as obvious as where you asked them to… they guide you to that place in the cosmos that it is right that you should be." **

** "Si! But it is so prejudiced we are always hunting extremists." Tlalocopa mused, the Chupacabra's features indescribable as ever. "One day maybe we tasked with hunting fanatical Moderates? That would be muy Bueno."**

** "Yes. Down with all Moderate, wishy-washy scum!" Calgari cheered. "That which is middle-of-the-road only deserves to be road-kill." His black eye twinkled merrily as a happy thought struck him. "Maybe our Zen navigator can find us some? He can make himself useful for once."**

** "Can't blame him for not being a pro navigator. He didn't have this as a first career," Angelina said "I heard he first studied to be an architect. He's got a specialist degree in egress design."**

** "Way out!" Calgari nodded.**

** Shirley cast him a sour glance. She thought it was probably Calgari who had almost sabotaged her training course; being part of a military unit rather than a comedy act was not what she had expected in her career. To fill in the educational gaps of subjects Acme Looniversity had not taught her, she had applied a month before for a military Survival course. It was a good thing she had double-checked, as the one she had 'somehow' almost ended up on was the complete opposite, a Perish-Miserably course.**

** Just then, her crystal ball began to flash. She pulled it out of its official '**_**Pouch, Molle, suburban camouflage pattern, reconnaissance scrying globe, pattern M2014**_**' and fed it some of her energies. Her mother's face appeared, looking concerned.**

** "Like, hi, mom," Shirley smiled, glad for a link to the relatively sane world (and ignoring her Mother's penchant for necromancy and demonology). "What's grooving? How's the egg?"**

** "He's doing fine, dear," Melicent looked at her daughter's image through the optical and psychic distortions of the sphere. "He'll be hatching any day now. But that's not why I've called. It's more about your eggs. I just ran across a prophecy, the usual way."**

** Shirley winced. "They're not eggs now. They're four years old, Mother. I… I've like, come to terms with my karma about that. They were my eggs, fer sure, but… they're Plucky and Margot's hatchlings."**

** "Yes. I think that's what the prophecy is about. Are you getting this down?" She cleared her throat, and carefully read from her notebook:**

"_**Woe to the world from new-fledged wanderers**_

_**Twice-torn from time, twice-torn from fated form**_

_**Two nests await - dark fates if wrongly chosen**_

_**One nest of earth, the one of warm providing**_

_**One nest of light, by the destroyer shielded**_

_**Two paths await, beware the darker parting!" **_

** "Well, that sounds a pretty vague and meaningless piece of blank verse," Angelina mused. "Pure cod, lifted from a third-rate Tolkienesque fantasy knock-off." She paused, considering. "Got to be genuine."**

** "If anyone in that trade had come out in 1928 with a simple, useful prophecy like '**_**sell ALL your stocks and shares by October 10**__**th**__** 1929 and buy gold, no kidding**_**' the Prophet's union would have come down on them like the apocalypse," Calgari said. "That seer would never have worked in this town again."**

"**A nest of earth. Maybe an Earth Mother type? Sounds cool," Shirley nodded, digesting the information. "Way harmonious! Sounds like someone I'd like to hang out with." She winced inwardly, agreeing that it fitted her daughters all too well. They had been twice torn from their time, and she had inadvertently torn them from their destined development, trying to dial back her annoying mallard's influence on them. It had been for their own good, she had thought at the time.**

** Seen through the crystal ball her earthly mother tutted, shaking her head slightly. "Now then, dear, you know they're not all happy friendly New-Age 'nature and nurture' types. They may give their worshippers health and fertility, but some of them want payment in blood. Remember that incarnation in Ur when you were High Priestess of the Goddess Ishtar? She was a Mother goddess, hmm? And she wasn't exactly all sweetness and light. Was she?"**

** "Watch out for the flying pigs and the honest lawyers to start showing up," Calgari whispered to Angelina. "Miracles are happening. I'm agreeing with Shirley. That does sound cool."**

** "Any religion's fine… at least, being in charge of the sort where your worshippers surrender their clothes and bank accounts before you hand out any enlightenment," Angelina mused.**

**Shirley took a deep breath, thinking about the words she had just transcribed. "Colonel Fenix? I have to like, tell you. I'm declaring myself meme 47." She referred to Unit Four Plus Two's training manual, a waterproofed olive-drab compendium listing the various dramatic clichés that described the essential elements of most of their missions.**

** "Meme 47?" Tlalocopa whispered to Calgari. "Isn't that like when a policeman finds he must arrest his brother, he declares personal involvement to take himself off the case?"**

** The raven nodded. "Nearly. 47's '**_**Pawn of Prophecy**_**. That's a good one. She's unavoidably involved in cosmic forces beyond her control." He smiled wistfully. "Plenty of good potential for Inescapable Doom, I hope."**

** "Mmm. Maybe." Colonel Fenix smoothed his uniform jacket as he contemplated. "You think it's your daughters who this Prophecy's referring to? And Margot's the one the prophecy calls the Destroyer?"**

** "Fer sure, she's not the Earth-Mother one," Shirley shivered. "She's a total hunting, killing machine. She's made my chicks into like totally merciless hunters too."**

** "By all accounts she certainly has been carving her way through that timeline's ecosystem," Sergeant Gander volunteered. "Apex predator, that's the term. Everything from fish to sabre-toothed tigers. Though only to survive. That's just the way that world is. She didn't choose to go big-game hunting for fun there." He cast a quick glance at Shirley. "And I know you didn't exactly plan to put her there yourself."**

"**I'm not happy with the idea but – I have to admit it's my bum karma that's to blame. The Universe has a habit of striking back, fer sure." Shirley's tail feathers drooped. **

"**Like you keep saying, everyone gets what they deserve, in the end," Angelina put in brightly. "I'm looking forward to seeing you get what's owed to you. You must have been real gnarly bad." She patted a hand-held video camera. "Hey! It'll be of… educational value. Totally! We can put your Doom up on ToonTube, if it's good enough. They've a whole section of the site for spectacular Dooms."**

"_**Look out the window, what do I see… crack in the world, and claws reaching up for me**_**… **_**all the nightmares came today, and it looks as though they're here to stay…**_**" Calgari crooned happily, a dreamy expression on his face as he warped an old David Bowie track.**

**Shirley's feathers bristled. Inwardly, she admitted that since Spring she had done much that in more harmonious moments she would have thought better of – taking Plucky from his destined loving bride Maria Mandarin in the first place, after having seen their happiness together on so many timelines. Selfishly she had tried to alter the chicks to have less of their father's influence – and somehow she could not shake the feeling that her chicks knew what she had done to them. Karma certainly had taken note; she would not waste time trying to calculate the miniscule chances of someone like Margot having been thrown into the picture at exactly the right time and place, both willing and able to feed her daughters – let alone in a way that would change their memes forever, bring nursed in mammal style as Plucky himself had been. "There's like, certaino-mundo a deep reason for everything, somewhere."**

** Calgari looked down his sharp beak at her. "Deep reasons? I never took you for a fundie," he smirked. "What, you believe in Intelligent Script Design, everything planned by some great Scriptwriter behind the scenes who it all makes sense to? You can believe that around here? With the screwball plotlines the Universe throws at us?"**

** "Oh, it's not so bad," Angelina winked. "That'd mean there's a Scriptwriter who likes sitting back and watching tidal waves washing mall's worth of shoppers away. Toonpox pestilences. Train wrecks. 'Act of god' landslides sweeping away charity homes full of blind puppies, with a billion tons of crud." Her eyes went wide. "I could worship one like that. A Creator who set up a Universe of hurt, just for kicks. And who cheers as those cute, clumsy Careless Bruins 'accidentally' set a few more planets on fire when they're 'just trying to light the barbecue'."**

** "Si! Reason the computer labs have such problems with making artificial intelligence, is they cannot find a real one to model it on," Tlalocopa nodded. **

** "They won't be asking you to pose for the model, totally," Shirley snapped at her.**

"**Colonel Fenix…" Calgari looked up at his commander innocently "Sir – if we're going to be up against something as religious as a good old-fashioned prophecy… shouldn't we fill some of our team's vacancies first? I've been reading Army regulations, and we're some key players short of a full team. The most suitable ones for this job are missing." The Raven adopted a pious expression. "I'd make a great Chaplain. I could provide spiritual guidance for the whole team. And I look good in black."**

** "He'd never be out of uniform, with that plumage – he's jet black even in the shower." Angelina Angelique said hopefully. "And he knows lots of religious rituals. Oh yes. I can vouch for that." She winked. "Some really fun ones." Although Angelina had often innocently proclaimed she was strict High-church Agnostic, the religions she considered believing in all tended to feature Toon sacrifice.**

** "Si! We are needing a Chaplain," Tlalocopa put in. "Minister to the living, raise the dead, protect the Undead from other Toons' prejudices. Calgari, he is most devout of all of us."**

** "Oh, I wouldn't say that," the raven bowed modestly to the chupacabra. "You're already a sanctified Priestess of Mictanecutli The Destroyer. And I know you never let the blood go dry on your altar, if you can help it. That's real piety."**

** Hal Fenix raised an eyebrow. "Those regulations were written when religions were a bit less… diverse." He held up a wing, blocking Calgari's protest. "And I can tell you're about to say we're officially meant to 'cherish diversity' these days. But our sort of missions are likely to go straight to hell anyway, figuratively speaking, without having a chaplain who's got it marked as a favourite location on his GPS."**

** "Fer sure," Shirley nodded, distastefully studying the raven. "Even if the 'road to Hell' thing isn't in my pantheon – I know you didn't even start that direction with Good Intentions." She knew that Unit Four Plus Two was short of some archetypes laid down by Toon military regulations – but they had managed very well so far without a Young Lieutenant Who Panics. She was certainly not going to apply for that post, despite her rank qualifying her for it. The Tough Black-furred Sergeant was another traditional role they had yet to fill – although Sergeant Gander was probably grey-feathered enough to satisfy that meme.**

* * *

**Plucky Duck was not the type who spent a lot of time contemplating the flowing threads of fate. But after a morning alone with his daughters in the meagre flat (Gladys and Gracie were at work, and Margot off power-lunching) he suddenly had a flash-sideways; not unlike a flashback, but jumping to an alternative present time.**

** "Brrhhh..." he shivered, looking at the snow outside the window. "That'd be dire." He had caught a glimpse of an impoverished Plucky Duck stuck in just such a narrow room, raising his chicks alone – without a pack full of gold or a loving mate to make things easier.**

** He turned to his daughters. "It's too quiet in here. Let's turn the TV on! I want to see what I've been missing."**

** At random, the first channel he opened was MTV – his bill dropped open with a clang at the sight of familiar faces at the Number One slot. "That's Fowlmouth as lead singer and guitarist. Dizzy Devil on steel drums. With steel hammers. And Furrball? Furrball on electric violin? Oh, give me a break, Universe". As the camera panned, his eyes bulged still further. "Mitzi? Mitzi Avery… Dizzy's girlfriend. She can play Death Metal on keyboard like that, as well as dance?" What the gorgeous human saw in Dizzy Devil Plucky had never understood.**

** Plucky sat back, visible waves of shock radiating from him. "Fowlmouth wanted me on keyboards – I'd be there on stage right now if Shirley had sat on her nest like she should have." He could tell the band was doing well; Mitzi's instrument was a rare and expensive Moog. Not a Moog, Synthesized, but the real thing.**

** Frantically, he changed the channel to another random one. It looked like an urban thriller; mysterious hooded shapes were sneaking across rooftops, apparently stalking some vehicle in the street below that was only hinted at by its sound and shadow.**

** "Oh boy. This is more like it." He rubbed his finger-feathers together gleefully. "Maybe it's the Combat Wombat show. I've missed this."**

** The camera cut to street level; his heart raced at the once-familiar urban combat sound that he had thrilled to when playing far too much Toon Tank Online; clattering tank treads running over tarmac, litter bins, parking meters and panhandlers.**

** "Just you wait and see this, kiddies," he told Brandi and Candi, his eyes wide with excitement "this is what it's all about on those mean streets. Cool, hot action! Oh boy."**

** Then he froze. The rooftop stalkers flung off their cowls to reveal terrifyingly cute forms now springing their ambush – optically directed Cuteness attacks stabbing down towards the vulnerable turret roof and thinly armoured engine deck of a fighting vehicle. But at that instant he saw exactly who and what their target was.**

** The vehicle was the GRAVVS METALLICVS, the extra-spiky signature wagon of his once-favourite Metal group, Deaf Mettle Foundry. Their instantly recognisable music began to blare as he realised the whole thing was the intro to a rock video, disguised as real footage. And standing braced on the engine deck, a gorgeous blonde-head-feathered loon woman dressed in the utterly unmarked green military tunic that only Incredibly Special Forces units wore.**

** "Shirley." Plucky moaned, his whole feather-form statue-rigid in shock. As he watched, optically focussed Cuteness pulses lashed down in searing ultra-pastel lances of Kawaiionising radiation – only to bounce off, reflecting and refracting away from the loon's stubbornly resistant psychic shielding. His eyes locked on the screen; it was like watching a car wreck, he could not turn his head away. "And she's standing on their reactive runic armour panels. If one of those bolts hits it…" He remembered the specification as if he had read it yesterday; the Sinister Runes would overload and explosively repel any sickeningly twee attack that would have punched through the High Dourness steel beneath them. Standing on them when it happened was not recommended.**

** Shirley McLoon stood proud against the amazingly realistic special-effects attacks, her aura blazing blue-white beside her, feathers blowing in the hot winds as they defended against what had so obviously come to corrupt EinsToonian Space-time; another assault by the Fluff From Beyond. Her eyes shone brightly, a grim determination mingled with the righteous joy of a Toon doing excellently a job they knew needed to be done. Shirley had gone straight from Acme Looniversity to stardom while Plucky had been stuck on the nest she had dumped him on, so far away that she could ignore him utterly.**

** With a sob, Plucky hit the remote control, then did something he had rarely done with his own TV – reached over and turned the set decisively off at the switch. The small red power light faded to black.**

** Brandi and Candi looked up at him, two sets of small, solemn eyes that seemed to see through him clear down to his construction lines.**

** The green mallard stared at the dead screen for half a minute. Then his beak twitched wryly. "Well, so maybe TV isn't all I remember. Let's go outside and play in the snow, kiddies!" He shuddered inwardly. The next time he turned the set on it was liable to be an even worse experience, if that was at all possible. The chances of picking any random channel at a random time and seeing Shirley flaunting her stardom to the world… he could still recall enough Cartoon Math for that. You could hardly call that a chance at all - it was a sure thing.**

**End Chapter Two**


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

**On a hilltop just before dawn within sight of the Pacific Ocean, a Number Nineteen Assault Bus was pulled over at one of its specialist bus stops, next to a helipad labelled "Official Secret Government black Helicopters Only". Another signpost read "Only kidding!"**

** Colonel Fenix stood there in the growing light, greeting his team and the crew of the GRAVVS METALLICVS. The neo-heavy-metal band were officially touring, but they had stand-in doubles who were conspicuously throwing TV sets out of windows and driving stretch limousines into Olympic-sized swimming-pools while paparazzi eagerly watched several hundred miles away.**

**"Glad you could all make it." Colonel Fenix smiled, nodding to his team and shaking the paw of Frank Sikosis, the commander and lead singer. "We've got rather a problem with unlicensed magic use in town. Someone's having another go at raising demons – they've not managed it yet, but we can spot the manna flash clear across the state."**

**Angelina Angelique's eyes lit up – a common Toon special effect. "Sir! Sir!" She put her feather-hand up as if she was back in class "You mean – we're going to find them and – lend them a hand? Show them how it should be done?"**

** Colonel Fenix sighed, and shook his head. "No."**

** The magpie thought deeply for a few seconds. ""So we're going to… hose a mall's worth of uncool shoppers, use the sacrifice to raise this demon ourselves and say he did it?"**

** "Si! Is a win-win situation." Tlalocopa nodded happily. "And if we take all their money, that covers us – official folk this side of the border don't do that. Officially."**

**The phoenix shook his head again. "No. We're tasked with finding out who's doing it, and tell them not to."**

** "Isn't that a bit… prejudiced, Sir?" Calgari asked. "Surely we're in danger of upsetting the cosmic balance if we keep stopping people doing things like that. Shouldn't we help them some of the time?"**

** "In a word, no. This comes from the top – orders from General Snafu himself. He called me in last night and made it very plain." The tall phoenix felt his feathers droop slightly as he recalled that meeting. Private Snafu had been conscripted 'hostilities-only' in World War 2, and with the seniority in rank coming with Toon longevity he had unwillingly risen to be a Five-star general. That had not been his plan at all; in 1945 he had been seconded to the Army personnel department, and hatched a scheme to get himself demobilised early by altering a few documents. Unfortunately, with his usual bad luck he had … fouled up, once again - and somehow instead managed to fix it that he could never be released, in any circumstances. General Snafu was not a happy man.**

**Suddenly there was a bright burst of psychic energy from down in the sleeping city; all except the buzzards winced as if a flashbulb had unexpectedly gone off in their faces.**

** "Report!" Hal Fenix snapped. "Give me first impressions! And did any of the instruments spot it?"**

"**I was looking that way, Sir, I got just a taste of what it's like." Sergeant Gander hesitated for a second. "It's unbelievably cute."**

**Colonel Fenix frowned. "How unbelievable? Do we have a reading, Frank?" He looked up at the vehicle parked behind him, "Anything?" He asked its commander and lead singer**

** Frank Sikosis shook his head, standing up in the turret. "The Credoscope couldn't get a proper lock on the target, Hal." He closed his eyes, calculating. "I'd say – attacking from the frontal arc it'd penetrate our main disbelief at 90 yards."**

** Colonel Fenix looked round at the reassuringly threatening bulk of the GRAVUS METALLICVS. Savage battles with other unthinkably twee things in the recent months had revealed a design flaw; cuteness pulses hitting the lower side of the gun mantlet could be reflected downwards to the vulnerable driver's hatch or the turret seam. Now the protections had been recently upgraded, with an extra collar of rusty spikes protecting the vulnerable joint at the turret. Still, there were limits.**

**"Time to roll," the phoenix said. "I think that was our wake-up call."**

**Half an hour later, they were in the mostly sleeping streets; a few late-night Toons staggering out from night clubs wandered past in ever-increasing circles with polychrome special-effect bubbles rising around them. **

**Shirley looked around, as they spread out to search. "That's all of us – except Corporal Barnes, who's manning the fort. He'd… jam our powers worse than the opposition's." Shirley panted as she climbed a wall to get a better view; she could have levitated but realised she might need all her astral energies very soon. "Like, that's the best place for him. He can stay there. Total downer on all astral vibes."**

**"That's a bit negative of you," Calgari mused, contemplating a night-black feather-hand. "You should be more empathic. He can't help it. After all, he is handicapped – in psychic terms. Panzaism is a clinically recognised condition; medically it counts as a Phobia." **

**"That's right," Angelina joined in. "You can't deny all of us go out of our way to be nice to him."**

_**Fer sure**_**, Shirley's aura commented sourly.**_** Because you know he's a masochist**__**.**__** Like yesterday when Colonel Fenix 'rewarded' him with six hours pack-drill over the local Girl Guide's assault course in the snow, he loved it.**_

**"Details, details…" Calgari waved her away airily. "You got on with him well enough in Japan last month."**

** "Like, back then he was testing that Psychological Warfare suit. He was no problem-o to me and my aura, like that. He thought she was just a weird reflection in the suit's visor." Shirley winced, recalling some of the truths she had needed not to tell the honest Corporal about that. True, the suit's electronic visor reinterpreted what the viewer saw, screening out anything potentially damaging to the wearer's mind. It could also insulate against culture-shock; the straw-hatted Japanese fishermen performing the decidedly eldritch Jellyfish Dance at a Shinto festival had been happily viewed by Corporal Barnes as break-dancing cowboys, which had caused him and his Panzaism* no problem.**

**Ten minutes of searching with all their psychic senses found Unit Four Plus Two converging on an old warehouse, hidden on a narrow service street behind a shopping plaza full of dry-goods stores and moist-evil emporiums. All was quiet, on all astral wavelengths – except for one area that glowed as if it was a hot spot where a brief fire had been, now cooling off.**

**"Around there," Colonel Fenix pointed. **

** Shirley's astral twin peeked through the wall. It was a familiar setup; old warehouses were common scenes for such action dramas. **_**Like, the door's unlocked. Nobody home.**_** She scanned through the building. **_**Oh, gross. The elevator! It's like tail-deep in psychic yuck residues.**_

**"I see that." Colonel Fenix nodded, opening the door and leading his band into the building. "Spread out and look for clues!"**

** "And here's us, not even having had breakfast," Calgari murmured. "A big bowl of **_**Jinkies! **_**or **_**Zoiks!**_** would be fitting in the circumstances…"**

**Shirley had followed her aura to look at the cargo elevator shaft. A material and an astral loon winced in sync. **_**Bummer vibes**_**, her aura commented sourly.**

"**Way strange. Whoever did this, he's turned the elevator into a dimensional portal," Shirley blinked. "Those are some seriously dark vibes coming off the floor." Her aura peeked through the carpet and shuddered at the cabalistic designs hidden underneath, engraved on the bare steel.**

**Calgari shrugged. "It's an elevator. It raises things. What do you expect? This one's better than most at raising demons, is all."**

** "A good old-fashioned left-handed pentacle. Retro style. An oldie but a goodie. We should fire you and get your Mom on the team instead, she's into this." Angelina elbowed Shirley's ribs playfully. "We had some classical education covering pentacles, back at Addams Academy. Practical and Applied Medieval Metaphysics; I bet they didn't teach that one back at your comedy shack."**

** "We believe in good old traditions, at our Academy," Calgari intoned solemnly. "And our prize-winning disturbed and sinister poets are happy that pentacle rhymes with tentacle. That's half the work starting a poem done just like that."**

**"Si!" Tlalocopa nodded happily. "Our School Nurse, she muy traditional. To her there were no diseases like you have them – she no believed in them. She only treat Toons for the imbalance of their four bodily humours – sanguine, melancholic, phlegmatic and choleric. And if that doesn't work – she'd got these pet leeches and she no like them going hungry for long…"**

** "That's what they really call getting medieval on you," Calgari put in brightly. "It's a sure cure for hypochondria, I can tell you."**

** "Freaky. And you dudes like went along with that?" Shirley blinked.**

** "Fer sure. We like to humour her." Angelina winked.**

** Shirley blenched. "Teaming up with you is paying off my karma – that's the one good thing." She had disliked the look of Addams Academy on sight, and the more she heard about that dark and Gothick place the more she was certain she had been right the first time. Any place where the black-clad students preferred to lurk sombrely in specially ill-lit (and professionally accredited 24/7 vampire-friendly) basements that echoed with the shriek of the invisible, was not her idea of fun. She had heard Angelina playing her school's official anthem; a random succession of long, low echoing organ chords interspersed with brooding silences shockingly cut by the bone-dry rattle of sinister crotala.**

** "Hey!" Calgari objected. "Just because someone's proud to be Chaotic Evil, it doesn't mean deep down they're not a good person!"**

** "Well, yes. Actually, it means exactly that," Sergeant Gander put in; a rare intervention when Acme Loo and Addams Academy Toons were 'debating'.**

** The raven sniffed. "Well, if you're going to be all **_**prejudiced**_**, about that sort of thing…"**

** Tlalocopa pointed to a parcel in the corner of the elevator. "Lieutenant McLoon – you're a good, self-sacrificing person, yes? The kind who would throw themselves on a grenade to save the company? Investigate that. Uno secondo…" She rummaged in her belt kit and unfolded her NBCC suit *. Stepping into it and sealing it tight, she grinned from behind the faceplate. ""It's maybe a booby-trap."**

** * *Editor's note: Corporal Barnes' Panzaism could cancel any arcane powers he disbelieved in, with a line of sight range out to 32 paces. The medical term derives from Don Quixote's down-to-earth squire Sancho Panza, who spotted the "giants" his deluded master was about to charge, were actually windmills. With modern full-blown Panzaism, the sufferer sees mundane things such as windmills where there really are giants, Aliens and aircraft-carrier-sized Elder Gods…)**

**"For boobies? With luck, it'll get other avians too; air-headed loons as well as blue-footed boobies," Calgari mused as he sealed himself into his NBCC suit. "Maybe it's a pound or two of properly weaponised Pneumatic Plague?"**

** Shirley sniffed. "You mean Pneumonic, fer sure?"**

** "Oh, no. That doesn't affect Toons. It'd be a waste, using that. Pneumatic plague though… your head inflates like a balloon. Quite a sight! Bigger and bigger it gets. Then… ever see what happened to left-over Lemmings at the end of the old 8-bit game?" He held his head tight, shook it violently and made a loud popping sound with his beak.**

** "Cool." Angelica pulled her camera out, looking on expectantly.**

** Shirley motioned her aura over. The glowing figure walked through and peered inside the parcel. **_**It's just some dude's lunch**_**.**** Whoever it was, evidently shopped at an Unnatural Food store; she recognised the same brand of Mystery Meat that Acme Looniversity used to serve.**

**Calgari sniffed disdainfully. "Well, that's just cheating."**

**They searched the area for another hour, but found nothing. Yawning, Unit Four Plus Two returned to their Assault Bus and headed back towards their local headquarters. Shirley gratefully sank into an armoured military bean-bag, flexing into a Zen pose. But she was not fated to enjoy the harmonies of the breaking dawn for long.**

**"Hey! It's the morning news on." Angelina had been fiddling with the controls of the bus's projector TV. "Today in WashingToon" – I love that show. Politicians are the highest form of life, right? After lawyers." She sat down, eyes wide to watch the pundits punditing. "Say, Shirley! These are the toons the Secret Government chooses to supposedly get elected– as if they really ran the place." She looked up at the screen eagerly as the show commenced****.**

"_**When asked about his controversial bill to bring in a national 'Serial Killer pride week', Congressman Hitcher simply threw back his head, gave his trademarked laugh, and revved his chainsaw." **_**The newsreader put in brightly**_**. "And now over to Damien Pitt-Fynde, our WashingToon political correspondent. Damien, what do you make of the Congressman's statement?"**_

_**The pundit, an imposingly horned goat, frowned and stroked his goatee beard. "Too early to call, Jim – except that Congressman Hitcher's drive to enfranchise and celebrate an often maligned and persecuted minority interest group will be pulling in a lot of votes from the majority, non-axe-murdering public."**_

_** "Axe-murderers being of course the more eco-friendly end of Mister Hitcher's target voters," the newsreader commented solemnly, nodding at the camera. "Whereas the chainsaw enthusiasts naturally have pull with the petrochemical and motor-manufacturing sectors. Key elements in our economy that badly need a friend in the White House." **_**He stopped, and drew breath to sum up.**_** "Congressman Hitcher. A madman, yes. But a madman of the people, for the people."**_

**Calgari smiled, turning away from the set, and read the expression on Shirley's face. "You should work on conquering your prejudices, Shirley, if you're ever to join us on the Light Side of the Farce. Peace and harmony, that's us."**

** "Like what, 'embrace your inner Maniac'?" Shirley sniffed. **

** "Afraid? You can borrow my Acme stab vest if that worries you," Calgari said brightly. "I'm sure it'd fit. Mine does."**

** "Mondo bogus. You'd like some poor Toon to put on that trick stab vest. Like I don't know what you're wearing is an anti-stab vest." Shirley said. "Planning any social soirees with Mister Hitcher yourself?"**

** "Think of it as expanding your eco-friendliness," the raven said smoothly. "If that axe or chainsaw wasn't being used to work out tensions on the annoying neighbours, it might be put to evil ends – like cutting down trees. And Congressman Hitcher's devoted to furthering high standards in all parts of our population."**

** "Fer sure. I heard that one. He wants an amnesty for any serial killer who, like, 'scores twenty' before they're caught. That's his idea of setting high standards." A loon looked down her beak at the raven.**

** "Why, yes. Everyone should have a goal in life to work towards, don't you think?" Calgari asked innocently. "And every honest goal deserves a reward."**

** "Just you've said yourself, people shouldn't be persecuted for their beliefs," Angelina said. "He simply believes some people would look much better if they were in more… pieces. And hey, he might be right. Unless you try it, how can you find out? You never get anywhere if you don't experiment."**

"**That's Progress for you," Calgari nodded. "Cutting a cord of timber with an axe is good, healthy aerobic exercise, but firewood's carbon-neutral at best. Cutting up your neighbours instead is even better, it's carbon-negative – after that they won't be switching on the wasteful air conditioning or driving down to the mall any more polluting the air. You do support the environment, don't you?"**

*** (Editor's note: the standard military suit protecting to an extent from Nuclear, Biological, Chemical and Cuteness threats. Generally comes with limited lifetime guarantee – when the working life expires, so does the wearer.)**

"**I'll support any environment where Addams Academy like trades extinction with dodos and passenger pigeons," Shirley snapped. "At least they were a valued part of the Ecosystem."**

"**Hey, we're all into that too!" Angelina enthused. "We're into restoring the balance of Nature, predator-prey style. Imagine if every block had a community sponsored mad axeman. There's so many fat, unhealthy kids around these days. If everyone was chased a mile or two every week, and the axeman sliced and diced the slowest – on average, that's doing the population good. Even the ones who got away that week, it's motivation for them."**

"**Si! Is an ecosystem thing," Tlalocopa agreed.**

**Shirley turned her bill up in contempt. Her aura looked on doubtfully. **_**That's one way of doing it,**_** she muttered. Shirley's material form flashed her a warning glance.**

**"We could use more help on this job," Colonel Fenix mused. "Time to see if we can get some more talents aboard. Failing that, General Snafu's authorised us another trip to the warehouse – since last time, some more shelves of mysterious artefacts from the 1930's have been opened up for re-use." **

**"More talents would be good. What happened to that English guy Corporal Oughtershaw we met working with the Other Agency? The guy who'd worked with us****,**** before my time?" Shirley asked. "He was mondo cool."**

** "He's back in Europe with that French team, Force Majeur," Clarke Gander said. "You remember, in Japan we met their computing genius, that owl Toon from Athens."**

** "Oh, fer sure. Zorba the Geek," Angelina snickered. **

** "Now, now. He did manage to defuse that armed Literary Device someone planted," the goose waved a feather-finger admonishingly. "It was set for a MegaToon yield denouement. You'd probably have cut the wrong story thread and blown a Plot Hole a mile wide in the whole Mean Streets storyline."**

** Shirley's bill wrinkled, remembering that trip. She had to admit, Calgari had talent – he had managed to put a temporary stealth curse on the antique Navaho blanket she had been wearing, turning it into an Insecurity Blanket. She had been well on the way to raving paranoia when Drogo De Vere had spotted it and broken the curse just in time.**

** "True, he did manage to break in through a building with some pretty radical Kung-Fu moves to get to the Device before it triggered," Calgari conceded. He contemplated for a moment. "With all that yoga, Lieutenant McLoon, I'm surprised you're not more into martial arts."**

** "Like, mondo bad karma, all that violence," Shirley snapped.**

** "Said the loon whose past incarnation rode with Attila the Hen," Angelina put in snidely.**

** "Oh, no. It's not technically violence at all. It's a dynamic focussing of your Chi' energies in a righteous, harmonious cause," Calgari drew back, as if a little shocked. "It's exactly your scene. Your destiny, even."**

** "That's right," Angelina chipped in. "Like, with Martial Arts you can tear a Toon apart with your bare hands, construction line by construction line, then snap-kick his head clean off…"**

** "Si! Bouncing down the road. Such a sight!" Tlalocopa cheered her on.**

** "You can do all that, and because it's Martial Arts, you can still be into peace and harmony even while you're drop-kicking the head through the nearest handy goalposts, for five extra points" Angelina nodded happily. "You know it makes sense."**

** Shirley stuck her tongue out at the magpie. Her Aura seemed unconvinced.**

_**We've, like, had to do that kinda stuff in the line of duty before**_**, the blue-glowing figure muttered.**

** "Get real!" Shirley whirled to face her astral twin, eyes wide in shock. "I totally cannot believe this! You're siding with them?"**

** Her aura shifted uncomfortably. **_**Fer sure, I don't like it. But it's a fact**_**.**

**"Unless of course you don't believe in letting inharmonious things like the truth getting in the way," Calgari put in smoothly. "I'd hate to have anyone go against their principles like that."**

** "That totally lags!" Shirley stepped back, looking at her aura in horror. The glowing figure shrugged, looking unhappy. The two loons retreated in a huff to their caravan, and locked the door. She caught Colonel Fenix's mental bulletin that after resting up, half the team were heading to the Secret Warehouse to pick up some more once-massively classified items that had been sitting on the shelves for seventy years and more.**

**"Mondo energy drain." Shirley yawned, and sat heavily on her milspec beanbag, looking around at the trailer. It was much the same as everyone else in Unit Four Plus Two had – except on the walls where her décor was mostly classical Chinese scroll paintings of clouds and mountains, Angelina's main decorative theme was skulls – and where Shirley's CD player had a ready pile of humanely recorded whale song and Indian sitar temple music, Calgari enjoyed restful ballads by Cannibal Copse, Cradle of Filth and Extreme Noise Terror.**

_**For you, maybe. I'm good to go. It's such a drag, being tied down to mortal poultry**_**, her aura complained.**

**Shirley's feathers bristled. "Then hit the high road, spook-girl! And this time don't leave me like totally flat-tyre. I need to like smooth out my biorhythms."**

**Her aura gave a sniff, and with a haughty toss of her bill the glowing figure headed out to the astral plane, where there was a harmonious party going on in seventh heaven**_**. Like, don't wait up**_**. With that, she was gone.**

** Shirley threw herself out flat on her humanely stuffed futon. "Auras. Can't live with them, can't live without them. Way bogus." In a few minutes, she was fast asleep.**

* * *

**While Shirley slept, other Toons were meeting up at Fifi and Rhubella's annexe to Babs' family burrow for a (mostly carrot-based) brunch. Rhubella and Fifi were happily catching up on all the news with the bunnies.**

**"It's good to be back in Acme Acres," Rhubella was saying as the camera zoomed in, relaxing on Babs' sofa with her wife's luxurious tail wrapped snugly around her. "We came back through Europe from our month in Africa– this time last week we were in Copenhagen."**

** Babs spun-changed into a 19****th**** century stage outfit. "**_**Copenhagen, Copenhagen, wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen!"**_** she sang, remembering her classic musicals.**

** "Oh oui! Eet was zo chic, despite ze weather," Fifi nodded. "To walk in ze Autumn woods in ze Tivoli gardens was tres neat, non?"**

** "**_**Copenhagen, Copenhagen, wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen!"**_** Babs chorused again.**

**Rhubella cast her a sideways glance. "Well, yes, that was the one we were aiming for." She blushed. "My map-reading isn't up to Jaggi's standard… the first time we tried to find it, we turned left too soon and instead of the Wonderful Copenhagen, we ended up at the rubbish one. I'm sure Jaggi could have navigated in straight on target, just using a stick, a string and one look at the stars."**

**Babs' memory brought up some sneaked peeks of Jaggi DiSpeckle, abstractly admiring Mary's taste in males. "Jaggi. A practical Toon. He wears a tactical vest… and probably strategic underwear." She waggled her eyebrows Groucho Marx style. Being happily wed to Buster had not struck her blind to enjoying a fine view. "Still. Better than wearing combat trousers and a pacifist T-shirt."**

**"Yes." Buster nodded. "That's what they teach you on the Adventure Drama courses he took at Acme Loo. He could have done comedy pretty well, if he'd been into that. Maybe he'd fit in with the comedy paranoia shtick – wearing life jackets in the bath and shark repellent in the desert, 'just in case'. But he's more the practical kind… whatever you need, he always has the right tool for the job."**

**Babs looked up at the heavens innocently. "I'm sure Mary would agree with you on that one," she deadpanned. "And by her account, it's always in excellent working order." **

**"And eet is 'aving ze effect," Fifi said. "Mary, 'er scent! She is ze walking invitation for ze making of ze foals." She blushed. "And with Jaggi, a Toon zo strong and 'andsome."**

** "And so all-over two-tone black and white. Not just a back stripe, but stripes all over" Babs winked at the skunkette. "So strange. You think he's Handsome too… I just wonder why."**

**Fifi smiled. "On our tour of ze world, Ruby and moi, made ze petit stop in Botswana. We 'ad ze… friendly reception."**

** "A good time had by all, I'm sure." Babs' ears crossed in concentration, recalling her geography lessons – useful Toon ones, letting a travelling film star know where they could expect to find critical props such as an isthmus or an unlocked watershed should the plot suddenly require them. "I didn't know you got skunks living around there."**

**Rhubella smiled in turn. "We only went skunk-hunk-exclusive till we knew our cubs were on the way. We want the first litter at least to be pedigree. After that – when I looked around for company we could relax Fifi's… entry qualifications." She winked. "And relax with other sorts of tall, striped and handsome Toons. In Denmark, a big Nordic badger. In Botswana - Ratels. Zebras."**

**"Zebras. Mon dieu!" Fifi's eyes crossed at the memory. "'Ow Mary managed zat in ze Spring – I will nevair know. And Jaggi, 'e was 'er first amour."**

**"Squash and stretch, girls, squash and stretch! Our first-year course in Basic Principles of Animation 101, remember?" Babs sang out happily. She paused, a quizzical look on her face. "Mind you, Mary doesn't look particularly squashed these days. So by elimination****,**** that must mean she's…"**

**"Anyway," Rhubella put in firmly "seeing as I'm a skunk-magnet still. I'm managing to keep Fifi in… appreciative company."**

**Fifi gave a happy sigh. "All zose years at Acme Loo, I was alone in mon Cadillac. Dreaming of l'amour. And Ruby, she – provides."**

**Buster looked thoughtful. "You remember when we studied the Law of Conservation of Drama, in Toon Metaphysics 401 class? Fifi's as pretty as any girl in class, and there's plenty of skunk guys who wouldn't mind her scent – but the reason she couldn't get a date was that'd reduce the comedy level. There's Toon laws about that. It's kinda strange she's got all she wants now. A good, kinda strange," he hastily added.**

** Rhubella nodded. "I've thought about that. Those laws are rather old. Maybe… they assume as soon as she's engaged to someone else… especially another girl - she couldn't possibly take any interest in the handsome two-tone guys who suddenly appear from all directions." Her tail twitched. "Well, years ago that'd have been funny – sort of. Like some toon having to go teetotal the day they repealed Prohibition****.****"**

**"Merciful heavens," Babs spin-changed into her classical 'Gone With The Wind' heroine, complete with crinolines, fan and blonde rag-curls. "Why ah do declare! The very ideah!" She flapped her fan, batting her eyelids in mock outrage****.**

**Fifi giggled. "And all ze striped 'unks Ruby finds me, zey are more zan good-looking. Zey are all good men – ze kind a girl might take 'ome to 'er family. Not a Johnny Pew amongst zem."**

**"Mmm. Like those two French-Canadian skunks. If Fifi hadn't been married already – if Jacques and Rene found out she's got a litter on the way after that weekend in September****,**** no question they'd be straight on the bus back to her – with a wedding ring and a coin between them." Rhubella closed her eyes, relaxing.**

**Babs scratched her head-fur, puzzled. "What's the coin for?" Then her eyes lit up. "Yes! I get it – if you can't decide which of them you want to marry, you toss the coin!"**

**"Two for one deal – bridegroom and best man on the same bus," Buster agreed. "One way or another."**

**Just then the doorbell rang. Rhubella checked the periscope. "It's Mary and Jaggi! Let's not keep them waiting, Feef – it's cold out there." With Fifi at her side, she rapidly headed for the corridor leading to the entrance ramp.**

**Babs and Buster looked at each other. Babs' pink nose twitched. "Well, buck of mine – at least the anti-stereotype league should be happy."**

"**Whoever they may be," Buster winked. "And why are they happy?"**

**His pink wife huffed slightly. "We're rabbits, last time I checked. And everyone else is knitting baby-outfits, not us."**

"**Yet," Buster clarified. He winked. "Then – did you see Rhubella's first attempts at knitting?"**

"**Didn't I just? The shape of them!" Babs shivered slightly. "The only way they'd get a cub that'd actually fit in those is if the stork really, really fouls up."**

"**Must be why Rhubella's keeping Fifi company on the orange juice, till the stork gets to her," Buster said. "Setting them a sober example. And keeping a clear head to pick the right "skunk-hunks"."**

"**That's a brave, strange thing she's doing. She's finding Fifi all the 'skunk-hunks' she can handle – which is a lot, believe me****.**** What Fifi's like when she's really on full throttle… if she were a car, she'd be locked on overdrive with an ACME rocket booster kicking in. But Rhubella never picks any striped guys for herself, even though she likes the idea, and Fifi's OK with her doing that if she wanted." Babs mused. "Rhubella once told me she's Metro-sexual."**

**"Meaning what, exactly?" Buster queried.**

** Babs gave an embarrassed grin. "I'm not sure. I think it means she gets the hots for urban transport systems." Her eyes crossed as she thought about the idea. "All those big trains racing in and out of tight tunnels all day… yes, I can just about see the appeal****.**** If I squint a bit."**

* * *

**Outside in the snow, Mary Melody and Jaggi DiSpeckle stood and stamped their feet (or hooves, in Jaggi's case) for warmth. Jaggi carried a big, insulated hamper of home-made food as a contribution to the party. "Fresh corn bread should make a change from carrots, for Fifi and Rhubella," he offered. That married pair still took their meals 'chez bunny' with the rest of Babs' family and the ingredients tended to be wholesome but rather predictable. "And they appreciate good food – not like those journalists we met yesterday." He opened the container and they checked it had all survived the trip in the back of the Most_Terrain_Vehicle****.**

**Mary frowned, picking up a still-warm loaf of bread. "It's the recipe Mother taught me, like her mother taught her. I'm always getting grief from people about it. Why shouldn't I be eating corn bread and hominy grits? Well, I like corn bread. Mother bakes the best in town. I also happen to like watermelon."**

**Jaggi nodded. "So do I. That's the trouble with well-meaning people complaining about stereotypes. Ham hock and corn bread wouldn't suit everyone, I don't say it should. But if it suits you, don't let anyone stop you just because of who you are. It'd be like saying nobody with an Italian name's allowed to eat pasta on screen anymore."**

**Mary pressed her stub human nose to rub Jaggi's black zebra muzzle lovingly. "You had problems with that kind of thing in school too?"**

**Jaggi gave an embarrassed equine grin. "Everyone does sometimes. But I found a way to put it to good use." His Acme Looniversity training showed as he spin-changed into a Zulu warrior outfit with hide shield, assegai and twelve-pound knobkerrie *, nonchalantly twirling the war-club like a classic Hollywood Western gunslinger spinning his six-shooter on the trigger guard. "If they really wanted me to be like my ancestors – I gave them a demonstration. Nobody asked twice."**

**Mary kissed him. "It's you I want, not your great-grandfather. But I can tell he must have had good chromoplasm, from what he passed on." **

**Just then the door opened, and Fifi and Rhubella were suddenly staring at them wide-eyed.**

"**Mon Dieu! Eet eez Botswana all ovair again!" Fifi's eyes crossed and her tail suddenly fumed, in instinctive recollection of other zebras in sunnier climes****.**

**Jaggi gave an equine grin of embarrassment, and spin-changed into a more fitting outfit for the snows of Acme Acres. "Just showing Mary what I inherited."**

**Mary squeezed his bicep lovingly. "Amongst other things. Fifi! We've brought a few things for your larder."**

"**Thank you! Zat bread, eet smells wondairful. Although Fifi 'as, 'ow you say, already ze bun in ze oven." Fifi winked. "Welcome to our 'ome."**

** * (Editor's note: Knobkerries being a traditional hardwood war-club, used in many traditional inter-tribal interactions. Easily the combat equivalent to the Toons' standard-issue Anime derived "Shojo mallet.")**

**They gratefully stepped out of the snowy world outside and down the ramp along a heavily tunnel that had once graced an Atlas missile silo in North Dakota. As they walked, Mary nodded with appreciation at the Toon engineering that had enabled the ACME contractors to move a tunnel intact.**

"**Mary! Jaggi!" Babs bounded to her feet as the couple entered the room and hung up their outer coats. "Great to see you!"**

"**Hey, Mary," Buster nodded nonchalantly. ""How's the reporting business going? I've seen your shows. Smooth work!"**

**Mary smiled, sitting down. "We get called in on some interesting missions. You never know when the phone will ring. Just last week, there was this invading ghost haunting an abandoned pet shop. A giant parrot. Frightening thing, it was."**

**Babs considered. "I can just see those headlines – '**_**Paranormal – or Parrot-normal?**_**'"**

**The hamper was unpacked and shared for lunch to general approval. Fifi looked around, and raised her glass of carrot-juice as she sat cuddled up with Rhubella by the fire. "To ze absent friends!"**

* * *

**Several states away near Akron Ohio, two of those absent friends were looking over their results as they contemplated returning to Acme Acres for the holidays.**

_**We're close to the Theory of Almost Everything, and many useful engineering projects,**_** Calamity's sign read. **_**There's my roommate's rocket design, for instance. It's a specially boosted booster for boosting other boosters **__**.**__**And last year's class invented Insect Propellant.**_

**"Don't you mean insect repellent?" Marcia wondered. Even after all her years on Earth, some things still baffled her. At the store the day before she had seen adverts for a 'Wonder Drain Cleaner', but a careful search of the technical literature had so far not unearthed any wonder drains it was obviously intended for****.**

_**No. Propellant it is**_**. Calamity ducked an annoying wasp, and pulled out an aerosol from his Hammerspace pocket. He gave it a quick spray – the wasp's pitch suddenly rose until it was well into the ultrasonic range as its wing speed massively increased. A streak of speed-lines lanced down the hall, ending in a small crack, a streak of smoke and a glowing ember as the super-propelled wasp demonstrated why insects and atmospheric re-entry speeds did not mix.**

"**Congressman Hitcher has promised that if he is elected he will cut the science budget, except for projects developing giant self-propelled, sentient bacon-slicers and cheese-graters that may run bloodily amok in the streets," Marcia noted.**

_**That's so short-sighted**_**, Calamity's sign protested. **_**We do vital research here. Just last week Experiment 402 proved the physical properties of lemon cream pies change completely on passing the .997% of light speed threshold. The average Toon in the street needs to know that.**_

**"You would think that has sufficient danger to please Congressman Hitcher" Marcia said.**

**Calamity nodded. Even theoretical work at the Ohio SupperCollider science complex was not without its occupational hazards – as witness the dozens of replacement mathematicians arrived every week to work on the ground-breaking projects.**

_**It's a worthy cause. At least our projects bring the world answers to questions they've always really wanted to know. Not obscure things where only physics grads can even understand the question, let alone care about the answer**_**, his sign-board proclaimed.**

**"Like wow, daddy-o," Marcia nodded, impressed****.**** "So true. Toons for years have asked themselves – **_**'how long IS a piece of string'**_**? And now we finally know."**

_**Yes. We have a predictive formula, tested exact down to a micron. Researching it certainly cost, though**_**. He glanced over to the nearest building, where a railway spur ran alongside one wall. Every two days ten large ramps discharged the mathematicians who had cracked into special sealed trains, the boxcars heavily shielded to protect the minds of the public from exposure to its mentally contagious contents on the trip to the repository. **_**We lost so many**_**. **_**Still. They knew the risks. Mathematicians just… expect to go insane. It's perfectly natural. Just as ice-hockey players expect to break bones or lose teeth, with what they do**_**. He reflexively checked his current sanity points on the red indicator badge pinned to the chest pocket of his lab coat, and nodded thoughtfully. Acme Looniversity graduates might start out low on points, but after five years in class they had at least reached a stable plateau where they were not likely to lose any more.**

**Marcia looked at her notes. Their current assignment was the Theory Of Quite A Lot Of Things, a subset of the larger Theory Of Everything project. "Professor Wile-E should be happy with our progress. We'll find out, when we see him next week."**

_**Hmm.**_** Calamity scratched his head, looking at the day's test results. Since leaving Acme Looniversity, their postgraduate research project had made significant progress. One of the fundamental constraints on the project said that the formula had to be compact enough to be legibly printed on a T-shirt, which had proved rather a limitation**_**.**__** It's not predicting everything it should, though**_**. The theory had successfully predicted star formation rates in distant galaxies and been word-perfect about what old Mrs Pildewski had said to her neighbour coming home through the streets of Cracow on March 7****th**** 1934 on the Number Eleven tram, but the existence of tapioca had come as a horrible shock to it.**

**"It will be good to return to my first landing-site." Marcia reflected. "I was only a type seven A when I arrived." She smiled, invisibly. Martian daylight was richer in the ultra-violet spectra and many of the familiar colours of her homeland only visible in it, but since ascending to biological Queen status, one stripe of her facial markings had shifted into the spectrum range visible to Toons with an Earth-drawn colour palette. "We will send the old Queen of Mars a photo, oh yes. From Marcia****,**** the new Martian Queen of Earth."**

**Calamity scratched his head. **_**That might be more impressive, if there were any other Martians here to rule. Even your Uncle Marvin's staying off-planet these days**_**, his sign-board said.**

**Marcia cast him an inherently unfathomable look that had storyboard artists and animators tearing their head-fur out trying to depict it. "Can't say that's real wierdsville. He's always been loyal to Queen Tiranee, dig? We're evolved to obey all the types further up the chart, like your bees and ants. He's only ever met one Type Eight. Now there's me and my new classy chassis. To scent the pheromones is to obey a Queen type – which on Earth would now be me - so he's staying out of my neighbourhood."**

_**Conflict of Interest. Cosmic scale.**_** Calamity nodded. **_**And you are his… kin**_**. Alone of all his classmates he had worked out the exact relationship between Marcia and her "Uncle"; Martian life-cycles were amazingly long and complex, combining the huge shape changes an Earthy frog or crab endured on its way to maturity, with the social ranking of bees or termites. How any Martian developed depended on the food and water resources available which in turn depended on the phase of the planet's climate, and Martians simply having eleven and two-thirds genders was the simple part. There were four different types of neuters alone, all of which were essential in various different climate-led growth cycles****.**** The earliest stages in the Martian life cycle had no recognised family bonds, their chromoplasm being anonymously spread by the toughest survivors of the pollen-like spores that could have been drifting in the dry winds for centuries after their Type Three B owners were nothing but fossils in the sand****.**

**Just then, his T-pad vibrated to signal an incoming message. Calamity's eyebrows rose as he checked the screen and saw who was calling. **_**It's Professor Wile-E – and he says he's here in Ohio! I thought he's supposed to be at Acme Loo teaching class, this time of year**_**.**

**"Well, if a tenured professor can't cut class, daddy-o, there's not much joy in having tenure," Marcia shrugged.**

_**I don't think he's playing hooky for the fun of it**_**, Calamity signed, frowning. **_**He says he's got a problem we can help with. As part of the Suppercollider team.**_

**"Why us? The place is crowded with major-league brains. We're about lowest on that tree," Marcia objected. She paused, considering. "But he knows us – and nobody else around here went to Acme Looniversity."**

_**Funny you should say that**_**. Calamity scratched his head**_**. Like our old class song admitted**__**,**__** 'we're all a little loony.' Where he wants to meet us – they're a lot more than that.**_

* * *

"**Here at the Institute we specialise in Endangered Memes – delusions that used to be common tropes in film and comedy, but are getting rare in the wild, as it were." The Director of the local Clinic for the Clinically Insane was a dishevelled human Toon with Einstein hair and beer-stein thick glasses. "But we take some regular patients – the strain of working at the Suppercollider drums up plenty of trade, around here."**

**"What's up with that dude?" Marcia asked, pointing at the nearest door, from beyond which voluble bursts of French could be heard.**

**The Director sighed. "What he has used to be such a common syndrome. He thinks he's Napoleon Bonaparte. Time was, we'd have a dozen or more Napoleons in here arguing about how they should have won the battle of Waterloo. He's the first we've had in years. Sad. This one claims there was a secret clause in the Louisiana Purchase, it was only leased from France for a century, not sold. So now we have to give it back, plus back rentals****.****" **

** "Total loony tunes," Marcia nodded.**

**"Yes." The Director frowned. "There are interesting aspects of the case. Only a year ago, back in the days when he called himself Fred Bloot of Walla Walla Washington, the patient spoke no foreign languages at all. We've checked. He could hardly order a beer in a Mexican bar. Now he fluently speaks what we've actually checked is 18****th**** century French - with a strong Corsican accent. Which led us to put a researcher on looking at all the original documents of the Louisiana Purchase – on every copy there really is a page missing."**

**"Wierdsville. And in that cell there?" Marcia indicated the next door, from the ventilator of which fragrant steam was rising****.**

**"Another endangered classic meme. Thinks he's a teapot. A tragic case." The Director took off his glasses and polished them meditatively. "Strange thing is, we can't work out where all the tea's coming from. You can search him all you like and put him in an empty cell – ten minutes later there'll be gallons of the stuff in there."**

_**Pekoe, Oolong or Earl Grey?**_** Calamity's sign printed wonderingly.**

** "Lapsang Soochong, mostly," the Director said. "Sometimes, English Breakfast blend in the mornings."**

**"Do you have much hope for them?" Marcia asked.**

** The Director shook his head. "I fear not. Not everything in medical science progresses. The trouble is, nobody laughs at crazies like they used to. And as you know, laughter is the best medicine"**

**Marcia and Calamity exchanged glances. The year before, it had been instrumental in healing Montana Max after a failed revenge on the Bunnies had seen him soaked in his own liquid nitrogen trap and plummet from the Looniversity tower to the concrete below – not that he had appreciated that kind of healing treatment from the rest of the class. It was amazing how effective it had been, though - she had never imagined how many pieces even a Toon could be shattered into and yet reassemble in more or less the correct order. 'They're not getting any?"**

**The Director sighed. "Think of it like this. When did you last see Screwball 'Screwy' Squirrel ™ do a live show?" He led them to the door at the end of the corridor. "Here's where your colleague was confined."**

**The door was opened, and Calamity looked inside. Every square inch, and most of the square centimetres, was covered in complex equations and sketched geometrical shapes. The coyote frowned, scratching his head-fur. **_**Some of these almost make sense. Others, they're… wrong. Not wrong as in badly calculated, but they're full of plain Wrongness**_**.**

**"The angles are all right," Marcia noted. "Wierdsvile! I've never seen a four-sided triangle before. Look! You can count the corners but it IS a triangle. It just is."**

**There was a distant howling of insane laughter from a dozen animators and background artists confined in their cells in the Secure Unit along the next corridor.**

**"He used those angles to escape, according to one of the investigators," the Director said "and that was a MiskaToonic graduate, he'd know about such things."**

**Calamity nodded. The coyote remembered his mentor explaining that severe enough distortions of screen-time could produce a Plot Hole, linking two otherwise unconnected storylines. **_**He didn't have to break through the walls… he just walked through the angles and stepped over to another space where they weren't there.**_

**Just then, there was a knock on the door and a familiar figure was shown in – their battle-scarred mentor, Professor Wile-E Coyote. He nodded politely to the Director. "Good afternoon! Apologies for the delay. I trust my students have been asking the right questions?" His voice was deep, mellow and cultured.**

**"I've been briefing them about Patient X," the Director nodded. "I've not told them why we're so worried he's missing. That's more your territory."**

**Professor Wile-E nodded gravely. He looked at his two star students for a few seconds. "Mister Coyote, Miss Martian. I've asked for your help because you're already working on the Theory of Quite A Lot Of Things Project. You understand the problems. And why we're only working to explain Almost Everything."**

**Both Acme Looniversity graduates nodded. On the first day at the SupperCollider they had been sworn to secrecy and briefed – if there really was a theory that could be legible, understandable and reducible to something printable on a T-shirt – the good news was, physicists around the world would throw a once-in-a-lifetime party, sponsored by a planet-wide union of grateful T-shirt manufacturers. The bad news would be, the morning after, they would be not only hung-over but out of work. Concentrating on Theories of Almost Everything was a good compromise between scientific progress and job security.**

**Professor Wile-E took a deep breath. "Patient X was a leading mathematician on our project. Whether he went insane first, and the insight showed him the way… or whether he solved the theory and looking at it drove him clinically loony – we don't know. But we think he's got a real, working copy. It's live."**

**And w**_**e don't want it to get out in public?**_** Calamity's sign asked. It would not be the first time things had to be kept from general knowledge for the good of the Tooniverse; his mentor had been for many years on the standing committee that every five years reviewed What Mankind Was Not Meant To Know. Current on the agenda was whether to reveal first the truth behind the Atlantis legend or about those fiddly cocktail snacks with cubes of cheese and pineapple, which had turned out to be far more sinister. Civilisation would probably not survive the impact of both shattering revelations in any one generation – the year before, an accidental data leak revealing the famed Terrible Secret Of Space had cost enough psychiatric casualties for that decade.**

**"It'd be game over for our science careers if it did, daddy-o," Marcia chided him. "And everybody's. Then what? Back to your family's desert ranch, spend your life raising cattle?"**

**Calamity looked pensive; back at Acme Looniversity he had designed a highly geared automatic winch that could potentially raise cattle faster and higher than ever before, that someday he was hoping to test. But he shook his head. **_**Do we have any clues?**_

**Professor Wile-E nodded. "Before the SupperCollider's official clinic stamped him as clinically insane, Patient X bought a batch of Size XXL T-shirts and a fabric pen. We've got samples of his handwriting. That'll give us an idea how big the Theory can be. Theoretically."**

_**I'll know it when I see it,**_** Calamity signed. **_**A lot of people would**_**. He winced, imagining the dire possibilities – such as someone wearing that shirt jumping out in front of a news camera doing a live broadcast. Decades ago, transmission qualities would have been too low to legibly get a shirt's worth of equations out on air – but not anymore. Someone who recognised the formula but not its consequences would be sure to freeze-frame it and put it up on Toontube, and then the secret would be out past recall****.**

**"We know he was working from that Scandinavian version of Unified Field Theory, Unified Fjord Mechanics* – that's the starting-point. Where he went with it from there …" Professor Wile-E shrugged eloquently.**

*** (Editor's note: Which was derived from the previous Norwegian breakthrough, Unified Fjeld Theory (a Fjeld being the land between two Fjords…))**

"**Copacetic, deep desert daddy-o," Marcia nodded. "We'll dredge every fjord till we find it."**

_**Metaphorically,**_** Calamity's sign signalled hastily. ****They took their farewell, and headed out of the Institute.**

**"Where do we start looking?" Marcia pondered. "It's a big job for us on our lonesome."**

** A bright special-effect LED light appeared above Calamity's head. **_**We start by getting some help! At least, I know who we can ask**_**. He pulled out his T-pad and began to make an encrypted call to a certain cryptic organisation.**

* * *

**When Colonel Fenix announced yet another addition to their schedule, most of Unit Four Plus Two took it stoically. Not everyone was liable to take it unquestioned.**

"**There's a missing Theory of Everything?" Shirley blinked. "So, what's new? Haven't they been trying to find that for years?"**

**Colonel Fenix frowned, looking at the information Calamity had sent him. "Yes. But the closer they got, the more they realised just what it'd be like, if they really had one. It's... worrying."**

** "It's just a formula. Something you can write on a wall. It…" Shirley's feather-form went pale, as she made an association. **

_**Remember, we channelled Albert EinsToon's spirit for Plucky, back in our first-year at Acme Loo?**_** Her aura prodded her. **_**E=mc**__**2**__** is just a theory too. But you can't build H-bombs without that. And this is a lot more comprehensive. You can do more with it**__**.**_

**"Coolest. We'd find out all the secrets of the Universe. It'd just be a matter of engineering," Angelina closed her eyes and smiled, nodding. "There's a sinister side to everything, you just have to find it."**

"**I wondered how the Careless Bruins manage to travel between realities," Calgari mused speculatively. "Now we'll know. What powers! Just think of the places we can go and the people we can do, when we get there…"**

"**There IS a reason there's been a Committee For What Mankind Was Not Meant To Know, for all these years," Colonel Fenix said dryly. "So that kind of thing doesn't get out."**

"**Like that English guy we met with The Other Agency told us… in World War Two they had a totally cool weapon like that – the Lethal Joke. Aced hundreds of enemy shoppers with it." Angelica's eyes were shining. "Shame they buried it somewhere mondo secret at the end of the war; the wimps reckoned it was just too dangerous if it got out." **

"**Sensible, fer sure." Shirley winced – imagining if it had somehow been broadcast on radio at prime-time.**

"**Yes. I know of the project. The ACME refurbished 1950's H-bombs you can buy in the shops are all modified Teller-Ulam designs; the equivalent in jokes was an original Cleese-Chapman," Colonel Fenix nodded. "It's buried somewhere in England, but probably nowhere near the monument they raised for it. I wouldn't have buried it in the same county." **

"**Sir! Can we do this and hunt down this sorcerer at the same time?" Clarke Gander pulled out an olive-green schedule holder.**

"**I think so. Neither case is likely to need everyone at once. But we do need help. Tomorrow, everyone on the list goes to the Lost Warehouse and chooses another useful item." Colonel Fenix took the scheduler and made notes.**

"**Probably like, you'll make yourselves twice as grody with more massive dark powers," Shirley looked at the Addams Academy toons distastefully.**

"**Oh, we're not so selfish that way," Calgari stepped back, an almost convincing shocked expression on his face. "If I found… let's say, some freshly-recharged Artefact on the shelf that'd give someone a lifelong magic power – I might not keep it for myself, maybe I'd gift you with it."**

"**Right. Fer sure." Shirley looked at him sceptically. "Mondo generous all of a sudden."**

**The raven looked innocently at her. "Fer sure, like you say. It'd be useful to have a permanent – **_**Speak With Vegetables, Level Nine,**_** or something like that." He let down part of his mental defences. "Take a look at my aura. See if I'm lying."**

**Shirley's aura sneaked a peek, protected by the astral equivalent of thick rubber sewer-workers gloves. **_**Wierdsville. It's the truth. But why?**_

**Calgari winked. "So when you tuck into your nice live beansprout salad every day – you can hear the little sprouts begging for mercy, and their lovely screams when you eat them alive. It would be so cool to know… for the rest of your life, you'd always be hearing that."**

**Colonel Fenix sighed and turned away as the air suddenly scented of ozone as an outraged loon and raven traded psychic blasts. Even if the mysterious sorcerer did try again tomorrow – with that pair gone, it should be a relatively peaceful day.**

* * *

**On her arriving back at Acme Acres, Babs had been slightly worried that after the whirl of Hollywood her old home town would have lost its lustre – if the unstoppable pink doe had one secret fear it was a fear of boredom. Happily, none of it was happening. A day after their meeting with Fifi and Mary, Mary had received a call from Unit Four Plus Two to come and report their latest mission. As soon as she heard the details Babs had instantly decided to volunteer her and Buster's services in the hunt for the missing Theory of Everything.**

_**There's one place round here someone would have to be insane to hide out, **_**Buster had agreed with her. **_**And as we know he is – that's the first place we'll look**_**.**

**"So, this is where even Gogo Dodo didn't dare go," Babs mused, looking around at an interesting landscape. "And he's a Toon who dared leave everything, and headed out to Japan to date those sexy robots. Give them something to think about besides going on city-busting rampages."**

** "That's Gogo for you," Buster agreed. "Mech love, not war."**

**North of Wacky-Land was the famous Uncharted Cartoon Wilderness (in capitals), which spread out far beyond the most tenuous fringes of sanity. As Babs looked out over the abstract terrain the ground shuddered, and a few seconds later the familiar crack of hypervelocity quiche striking concrete came to her ears. The rumble of its passage through the atmosphere followed afterwards, gradually fading****.**

**"Dangerous place. I wonder where those are coming from?" Buster asked, looking at another line of fire still high in the sky****.**** They had already found some strange artefacts, and secure in his Hammerspace pocket was a unique left-handed baseball bat. The trip was worthwhile already if just for that.**

**Babs gave an embarrassed grin. "If this was Plucky's favourite, Retro Rocket Rumble… I'd say they were launched on a depressed-trajectory****,**** fractional orbital bombardment sneak attacks over the South Pole to avoid the radars… but as this is past even Wackyland – the answer's probably 'who knows?'" She prodded one of the soft, wrinkled grapefruit-sized pinkish grey lumps that were scattered across the landscape. "I wonder what these are. Some weird sort of fungi?"**

**It was Buster's turn to grin. "Probably just Wackyland's usual weather. When they get 'the odd shower' here, they really mean 'odd'. I expect it b****-****rained heavily in the night."**

** "Ewww. Brains." Babs shivered. Then her ears went right up in alarm. "Oh-oh. Buster… if those brains are still thinking – maybe we've walked into a mind-field?"**

**Buster's eyebrows waggled****.**** "Then we'd better 'mind' where we step. You hear about a country's heart-land, so why not its mind-field? Or if they're really mushrooms, maybe they're hallucinating mushrooms."**

** "Don't you mean hallucinogenic?" Babs asked, her pink nose twitching.**

** Her blue buck shrugged. "We'd have to know what they think they're seeing to be sure." He winked. "Although out here – if they think the world's gone crazy, they're entirely sane, because it is"**

**"Unless they see it as dull and routine. Then they would be hallucinating. Hmm." Babs pondered as they carefully bunny-hopped their way through the mind-field****,**** trusting to their lucky rabbits' feet to keep them safe. **

**They saw no more of the strange lumps after crossing a small ditch ("the brain drain", as Buster suggested), stealthily passed by the high-resolution but slightly eerie computer-generated Toons of Uncanny Valley, picked their way over entirely flat mountain ranges inhabited by enormous dwarves until in the distance the bunnies saw a huge mountain of hand-labelled tapes and media discs, resting on an antediluvian basement strata of 8-track cassettes. **

**"And this would be?" Babs asked curiously.**

**"I'd guess it's a smuggled supply of some ancient rock group's illegal bootleg recordings, just dumped" Buster hazarded. "That pile looks old enough for the lower levels to be Glam-rock, even." He paused, considering. "Maybe they're not even real bootlegs, but forged ones. If it's an Irish group, that'd make it sham-rock."**

"**Impressive. Banned band contraband abandoned," Babs mused. "Mondo bad karma, like Shirley'd say. I wonder who left it lying around?"**

"**If we had my laptop, we could check that online source on world villainy," Buster suggested.**

"**Wickedpedia?" Babs' ears went up.**

"**Check." Buster nodded.**

"**Check? Checkmate. Mate in three moves." Babs was addicted to getting the last word in.**

"**What, right here?" Buster looked around at the abstract scenery. "Well, what Babsy wants, Babsy gets." The blue-furred buck waggled his eyebrows. **

**Babs' eyes flashed. "Why, Buster Bunny. What do you think I am? A rabbit?" She paused, turned then looked back over her shoulder coquettishly. "On second thoughts, it is a room with a view. And what a view. Look! You can see the fourth and fifth dimensions from here." She pulled her camera out of her Hammerspace pocket, passed it over and posed as Buster photographed her with the unique background. A disturbance in the Farce as of a million storyboarders and background artists crying out in despair and suddenly silenced, went unheeded.**

"**Well, as long as they can't see us." Buster gently caressed his wife's cottontail, his fingers massaging gently****.**

**Babs relaxed, pressing against him. "Mate in three moves?" She whispered, pressing her clean white tail back against his paw. "Well, blue-boy… I have to admit, for the first move, that's a pretty good one…"**

**End Chapter Three**


	4. Chapter 4

Home To Roost A Not-So-Tiny Toons Tale by Simon Barber 9

**Chapter Four**

**Far beyond the most lunatic fringe of Wackyland, there was a place. That was about all you could really say about it; most days it was impossible to describe it in any way, positive or negative. Today, you could at least say it had two rabbits in it, who had just been trying vigorously to increase that number.**

"**That was wild," Babs relaxed in the middle of what might be called a field, for want of a better word. "Buster – you know I've been… worried a bit. About you and me... that is, what happens with all my spin-change forms. I never thought I could be them all at once." **

** "You're you." Buster kissed his wife's pink nose. "It doesn't matter which view." He grinned. "You know, '**_**Duck Dodgers of the twenty-fourth and a half Century'**_** had better watch out – he'll be upstaged on sight by…" he took a deep breath and announced in bold, ringing tones – "**_**Babs Bunny – in the Sixth Dimension!"**_

** "Mmm. That could explain a few things." Babs pondered briefly. It was more Calamity's line, but she could tell there were some radical possibilities here; recollections of what her Anime friend Merumo had whispered about the delights only attainable in the Warp where her husband's family lived, sprang to mind. Another image bubbled up into that highly caffeinated bunny brain; when the two-dimensional shadow of Professor Bugs' statue fell on the pavement outside Acme Looniversity, it radically changed with the angle of the sun. An entirely flat Toon living on the pavement would at any one time see a whole shadowy procession of changing aspects of what they might recognise was somehow the same thing – but never be able to imagine the full roundness of what cast them. She had been – and still was – every spin-change she had ever taken, and some she had never even imagined – not as a blurred blending or a rapid flick-book switching between them, but just as a shadow Toon brought up into 3D could suddenly realise the full shape of the statue. "I like this field. It's a grand field." She copied Arnold the pit-bull's gruff Germanic voice. "I haff ein GUT feeling about dis."**

** "Any field with Babsy in looks grand to me." Buster assured her. He smiled. "We can stay here awhile. I know we're on a mission here… but if this Patient X is wandering around, he's as likely to bump into us as we are to run into him. Fields usually have bushes somewhere. If we find something like it we can recognise, we can make it into an am-bush for him." He grinned. "Aren't we generous?"**

** "Sounds good to me, blue-boy," Babs' tail twitched, as she cast an appreciative eye over her buck. "While we're waiting, we can… what was it Shirley used to call it? '**_**Unify the forces'**_**, that was it, some more." She relaxed, looking around. "So, it's a field. That's good enough. We're rabbits."**

** "**_**Doing what comes naturally…."**_** Buster sang a song fragment, and caressed her. They kissed, uniting in the field in super symmetry.**

** "Sounds good to me." Babs demonstrated, simultaneously with all her spin-change versions in six dimensions – not as a mob of separately costumed rabbits but as one, in all aspects at once. It was a nice peaceful place, she noticed – there was a slight background noise as of the endless echoes of the sanity of a host of background artists shattering, but she could easily block that out. She felt like a hundred clocks suddenly getting put back in sync – where some had been left running longer than others, now they all ran to one heartbeat. In a way impossible to describe, Nurse Babs embraced Buster as did all the others, conterminous with what might be called the full field of potential Babs-space.**

** An hour later beside a smiling, happily sleeping pink doe, Buster looked around. He made a mental note to pick up all the items that seemed to have fallen out of their Hammerspace pockets – no, he corrected himself; he still had everything, but he could see it all simultaneously now. It was more like Hammerspace itself had spread out, the pocket dimension uncoiling to be just another direction he could look down into as if it all had been trapped in a maze that he could only now get a bird's eye view of. **

** Babs stirred, waking. She looked up at her buck, spotting him watching over her. "Mmm. Thank you, Buster. They say you shouldn't sleep alone in a strange place," she yawned, stretching luxuriously. "And boy, is this a Strange Place."**

** "Interesting scenery around here – I've been watching it. You don't even have to travel to see the sights; they go past whenever you stand still. Look!" Buster pointed to a row of giant pyramids making their stately way across the horizon, with their Hollywood Ancient Egyptian meme group following like a parade with marching bands. One of the pyramids winked its giant eye at him, waving a tentacle before vanishing. Evidently the one depicted on dollar bill had not been showing the full story.**

"**This might be where Sphinxie's family comes from", Babs mused. "Time-warps are nothing new around here – they're just a form of Plot Hole; we studied those enough in Professor Wile-E's class. That's a fact. Like everything Shirley's into is holistic, this is hole-istic."**

"**That's the truth, the hole truth, and nothing but the truth," Buster quipped.**

"**Quite." Babs looked towards where the pyramids had gone. "Time-warps, we know. They dance the Time-warp downtown in the Cool Club, most weekends. But I never knew the Ancient Egyptians worshipped their god Ra with cheerleaders." Papyrus pompom shaking had indeed been much in evidence.**

** "Makes sense. That must be where they got the idea of Ra-Ra skirts from," Buster said. **

** "Oh, you." Babs nuzzled her buck. She looked around. "Any sign of our wandering mad mathematician?"**

** Buster shook his head. "I've not seen hide nor hair of him."**

** "I see hide, and hare. Nice blue hide. I like this view." Babs kissed him, pulling him, back down. "Well, blue-boy – since we're here – let's unify the forces some more."**

* * *

**Back in an Acme Acres with only three space-like and one time-like dimension, two Perfecto graduates were busy planning their own futures.**

"**This is one of the places we're looking at, Fifi and me," Rhubella waved at the peaceful snow-covered suburbs, very similar to (although happily on the far side of the city from) the streets around Elmyra's family home. "Mary Melody's been looking at rentals for us, while we were globetrotting."**

"**And how is Miss 'Stripes-R-Us' these days?" Margot asked, a mischievous smile on her face. "I've not seen her and that hunk of horse since I got back. Any distant sound of wedding bells revving up for action? I remember they were already engaged when I… left."**

"**They still are. She says she doesn't mind if it's a long engagement," Rhubella said. "That's Mary for you. Plans everything. Can you believe it, before she decided to go all the way with Jaggi, she cleared it with her parents?"**

** Margot raised an eyebrow. "Long engagement, hmm? That usually means, book the wedding as soon as the stork's in sight. She might have to wait a very long time."**

** Rhubella shrugged. "Why? She's young and healthy, so is Jaggi. Massively fit, too. And they put it to pretty good use, pretty often." Then her face fell. "Oh. I see what you mean. Toon biology tropes. She's not as Toony as Babs or Fifi, though. Maybe it won't apply to her so much." Mary had rarely needed to use her Toon abilities in their class films, but Elmyra certainly had survived being flattened and flushed a few times, and she was a human only slightly Toonier than Mary Melody.**

** "We'll see." Margot looked across at the neighbouring gardens. Across the road, a young jackass Toon was pushing a lawnmower, no doubt calculating how many thousand acres he still needed to mow to finance three years of college. * "I know the kind of thing that really would work for her. Guaranteed stork. Right now."**

** "Which is?" Rhubella asked dryly. Margot was famous for setting up scenarios of a complexity (and far greater perversity) rivalling Calamity Coyote's, but unlike Calamity's elaborate schemes to catch Little Beeper, Margot's had generally worked.**

** "It so happens Mary's asked if she can interview me, about being castaway in sideways time. Not many Toons have that experience and get back to tell. We've not named a time for the interview yet." Margot paused. "Let's think of nice situations. I expect she'd just need her recorder and notebook; maybe she wouldn't need to bring Jaggi along with the cameras just for that. So just maybe she wouldn't bring Jaggi either."**

** "Right." Rhubella said dryly, looking hard at her comrade. "And then?"**

** Margot looked across the road. "You say she's getting… adapted to suit her main squeeze? Turning into a humanmare, not a humanmaid, one of these days?"**

**Rhubella nodded. "She says she's changing, all right – '**_**not where it shows, but where it counts**_**.'"**

"**Well. Humans aren't used to going into season like equines… by all accounts it's very different. Let's say her first one starts very suddenly – let's say it's… overwhelming. And I've stepped out for a minute; she's all alone when that nice young equine over there innocently knocks at the door for a glass of water. Mary opens it. She suddenly feels more welcoming than she could ever have possibly imagined. His eyes go wide at a scent he really doesn't expect to get from any girl without a tail and long ears. Maybe she's his first girl – certainly she'd be his first human, or near enough. Mary stands looking at him in shock for a few seconds, she can't believe what's happening. Then…" Margot continued with a long, biologically detailed and well-choreographed scene that left Rhubella in no doubt that the mallard girl had dated equines as well as avians back at Perfecto. Hans von Hafflinger was the 'usual suspect', and she knew Margo occasionally 'lost' Perfecto style forfeits. On those occasions, nobody but Rhubella knew she had been secretly playing to lose.**

** "…. And I walk in unsuspecting with a tray of coffee and we all have a surprise. Shock and awe! THAT is the sort of scene it takes – maximum drama. There'd be mid-air collisions of storks converging on the spot," Margot ended. "You know, with some wild animal species the girls are only fertile ten minutes per season? Those storks know they have to hurry when they get a call like that." She raised an eyebrow. "From what I've seen of her, I don't think Mary's the kind to let that falling feather go right on past her and fall down the nearest drain." **_**Not like I did**_**, she mused – though what conscience she had, scarcely twinged. It was possible, she considered, that was the reason her own chicks would be born going the biological route, having refused a stork before.**

** Rhubella felt her eyes uncrossing and her tail straightening out; there was no question that Margot always could plot a compelling scene, and her imagination was still as fertile as the rest of her so clearly was. She shook her head, her fur suddenly bristling in indignation. "No way! That'd be a dire thing to happen to poor Mary – don't forget she's a friend of mine! And she's devoted to Jaggi. She'd never forgive herself."**

**Why anyone would want or need their lawn mowing in December (rather than shovelling snow off the driveways) was an interesting point. **

** "No doubt… but that's hardly the point. There's a lot of Toons who wouldn't be walking around right now without that particular meme." Margot relaxed, looking out over the peaceful scene. "Clear everything in advance with her folks? That's no good. Elope at the last possible second on a hang-glider escaping over a burning city while being chased by pterodactyls, that's more like the style."**

** "Hmm. Acme Loo's Deportment tutor, Miss Prissy, even she laid and hatched an egg somehow, years ago," Rhubella mused. "I've met her. A skinny, shrivelled-up old thing; Miss Granny says she always was even back in the 1930's. What sort of scene did it take for her to get that egg? How extreme would that have had to be?" Her tail twitched at the thought. She had to admit, from everything she had heard about the Toonier side of life, Margot was probably right.**

** "I'm glad I found out what it takes for me. Though there aren't any charging direwolves around Acme Acres, if I want another nest-full in a few years." Margot looked thoughtful. "I don't fancy the equivalent action drama over here."**

** Rhubella thought back to what she recalled of Plucky's interests. "It'd have to be something straight out of Toon Tank Online, taking out a charging main-battle tank at point-blank range, just before it rolls over you. Or a giant robot that's about to stomp you."**

**"A girl could get hurt doing that – so they say." Margot relaxed, her feather-hands resting on her rounded belly. "We'll see how it goes with these first. I think it's twins." Naturally, for someone as attuned to the sense of dramatic as Margot, she had not simply checked into Acme Acres hospital and asked for a scan; that would have quite ruined the suspense.**

** "Do you want boys or girls?" Rhubella asked. "Mine's sure to be a daughter. Fifi hasn't got the right sort of chromoplasm to give me sons." She stroked her pristine white stork feather reassuringly. "The litter she's carrying could be either."**

** Margot contemplated. "Either are good for me. Plucky's already got two daughters; I know he'd be happy with a son. That's OK. But it takes a daughter to inherit the Mallard family treasures." She grinned, and shook her shoulders making her considerable bosom jiggle. "All the girls in my family have had these for three generations, since great-grandmother Masie Mallard hatched an unexpected egg back in 1930 – I'm very glad to say."**

** "Odd, that. Your figure looks mostly mammal but you're only what, one sixteenth?" Rhubella paused, remembering what Margot had told of her family history. "No, it's less than that even – so, if your great-grandmother dated a mammal guy in 1929 that makes the nearest mammal girl in your ancestry his mother." Rhubella's tail swished. "She must have been really something."**

"**I've got a one thirty-second share of her, then" Margot confirmed. "But it's not like most shares anyone picked up in 1929 – it never crashed, and it's paid good dividends ever since."**

"**And it never skips a generation, or gets diluted down with all the avian chromoplasm landing in the family tree since then?" Rhubella scratched her head-fur in puzzlement. "Looks like the whole mammalian package sticks together pretty well. At least you didn't turn out as the sequel '**_**Mallard Family 3:**__**return of the cloaca**_**.'"**

** Margot laughed. "That'd be '**_**real horror show' **_**for me****all right,****like Plucky****says – and I'm not much into horror films. Still. All the women in my family are pretty dominant. We've got dominant genes and memes we pass on. What else would you expect?"**

** "Makes sense, in a Toon logic sort of way." Rhubella shrugged. Drama certainly was the key ingredient – with a very few exceptions. She had met Shirley's mother, and Melicent McLoon had broadly hinted that her latest egg had been started right on the kitchen table its nest currently sat safely under – but Melicent was a sorceress, and the whole point of having that career was to achieve strange and unlikely things. "Did you ever have a chromoplasm test done? You might find a clue where your mammal traits came from. What species, I mean."**

** "Never did. Never cared that much." Margot hesitated. "Have to admit though, the taillessness intrigues me. Not that a Perfecto girl ever wears off-the-peg clothes…"**

** "When there's anybody watching," Rhubella put in slyly. Perfecto students were clients of exclusive costumiers; they did not go shopping at the Acme Mega-mall with the rest of the plebeian crowds.**

** "But off the record – human skirts and slacks fit me better than other species' designs. There aren't many tail-less Toon species, after all." Margot's hard-to-explain teeth flashed in a sudden grin. "Plucky once asked if I had any Pirate ancestry."**

"**Pirate?" Rhubella asked, bemused.**

**Margot winked, and patted her feathered backside. "It's my attitude. Pirates get booty, right? Wherever it came from, I got a great booty – and pirates don't care how they get it!"**

** Rhubella winced slightly. "Seems like I'm not the only one Acme Loo humour's rubbing off on."**

** "Still, I've been rediscovering the joys of shopping, after four years without even a five-and dime store. It's ironic; we had rivers full of gold nuggets, but nowhere to spend them. I picked this up for Plucky; he's minding the chicks while I'm here," Margot opened up a neatly indexed bag. "It's four years since he's seen a copy. He's told me a lot about it though." She handed her friend a glossy high-tech magazine. "Some sort of fan magazine for the Retro Rocket Rumble game he's into."**

"_**Retro re-entry vehicles in heat**_**," Rhubella read out incredulously. "**_**See 1950's classic blunt copper heat-sinks in searing hot action! Reynolds numbers in the millions! High-enthalpy shots, full shockwave patterns revealed!"**_** She quoted some of the article titles, unfolding the centrefold to study what the caption described as '**_**1970's hottest top-secret**__**experimental agile delivery vehicle deploys penetration aids on Phase 1 re-entry'**_**. She blinked. "Plucky is seriously weird, you know that."**

**Margot shrugged. "He's interesting. And he's got to be into something for when I'm not around."**

**They said farewell; Rhubella headed back to the Bunny family household, where Fifi was advising Babs' younger sister Bonnie on finer aspects of skunk family life. Bonnie was counting the days till the holidays and the arrival of her two-tone French boyfriend; the other Bunny sisters were casting her envious looks and scheming like a Perfecto girl how to upstage her.**

**Taking a cab back to where the nearest road ended by the lakeside, Margot trudged half a mile through the snow to the tenement as the light faded. Looking up at the warmly lit windows, she paused for a minute while the snow fell around her. **_**This old place actually looks good – when you're used to reed huts, it feels like home. I feel a thousand times richer than I used to… after four years of having my baseline standards reset.**_** There was no elevator but she took the stairs, happy to be out of the weather.**

** "Hey, honey, I'm home!" She called out, using the spare key Gladys had lent her. She suddenly grinned. "Domestic cliché or what? I never thought I'd ever say that." She spotted Plucky, busily hunched over her T-pad in front of the window. "How's it going?**

**Plucky frowned. "It's weird. I spent all this time wondering what was going on back here – and nothing's happened. Not really." He looked at the computer screen. "The same flame-war I started is still going on at the Retro Rocket Rumble user group like I'd never been away!"**

"**People are complaining about World War Three being played as a game?" Margot asked, intrigued.**

"**Heh. No. This is a fan site; if they didn't like it they wouldn't be there. It's my thread here - **_**What's the (non-thermally) coolest feature of the Atlas E missile?**_** Some Toons say the re-entry vehicle. Some say the gimballing main engine nozzle. How stupid can they get? It's obvious. It's the Vernier steering jets it uses for balance; only the Atlas had those." He looked at the displayed schematics lovingly. "They're so – Atlas iconic."**

_**That's a conversation he wouldn't dare have with Shirley**_**, Margot reflected. It'd be something like **_**'get crucial, Plucky! Your worshipping those mass-murdering missiles is totally stressing out my aura' – or something hippy style like that. **_**She passed over the fan magazine. "I thought you might like this. Have fun."**

"**Oh boy," Plucky's eyes lit up. "I've missed this." He kissed Margot and grabbed the magazine, fortunately in that order. For a few minutes he read through it, and frowned. "Morons! The self-styled 'in crowd' are playing those weird Soviet early 1960's missiles these days – the ones with the latticework truss supports between stages. Dumb R-16s. I always thought those looked so lame. And I was right."**

"**I'll leave you to it." Margot heard the key turn in the lock in the hallway door, and turned to see Gladys and Gracie come home, shaking the wet snow off their waterproofs.**

"**Margot!" Gladys smiled, hanging up her cheap yellow PVC cape behind the door. "How've you been? And the children?"**

"**Me? Catching up on lost time. And Plucky took the chicks out to play in the snow. How did that go?" She nudged her mallard mate; as soon as she got in she had checked Brandi and Candi were sleeping peacefully in their corner.**

"**Eh?" Plucky put down his magazine. "Oh, it was swell. We made snow-ducks down by the lake. The chicks met a bunch of other kids their age. I let them get on with it." **

"**Mmm. I wonder just how well they got on. Apart from Running Bare's tribe, they've not met many other kids. School's going to be interesting all round." Margot said.**

"**School?" Plucky blinked at that dread word. "Heh. Feels like we only just got out of it, and they're going to be heading right in." **

**Gracie shook her head wonderingly. "For us, they went straight from eggs to kindergarten in three months. At least you had four years with them." She cast her eyes lovingly at the sleeping pair, before glancing at the bathroom cupboard where an unused set of avian hatchling clothes would be gathering dust if not for her constant cleaning.**

"**Plenty of kids grow up in isolated farms and mile-deep survivalist Anvil shelters," Margot considered. "And they generally catch up on social skills, more or less. Are you sure everything went OK, Plucky?"**

**Plucky shrugged. "Hey, you know kids. Always running around, shouting and screaming like they're on fire. Our two came out smiling."**

"**That's the main thing. As long as the others came out in one piece." Margot smirked inwardly. She guessed that Brandi and Candi had inherited her meme and Shirley's powers, and were starting to put them both to good use. **_**With great power comes great freedom from responsibility**_**, she recalled her Perfecto Ethics lessons; **_**and absolute power – is absolutely fun**_**.**

* * *

**Another homecoming that evening comprised Buster and Babs; they had re-entered through the surreal expanses of Wacky-land without spotting any more lunatics than usual, stopped to chat with Sphixie and her pride (three lion males and now a Pegasus stallion – prompting many uncalled-for 'mile-high club' jokes from Babs) and finally arrived back in EinsToonian space just outside Acme Acres.**

** "What a trip," Buster yawned. "Well, we didn't find who we were looking for – but what we did find was worth it." He patted his Toon pocket, amazed that the left-handed baseball bat had transitioned to local space without losing any of its properties.**

** "Mmm. I think it was well worth it. Buster, I have a … happy feeling about this." Babs squeezed Buster's paw lovingly. She looked around at the snowy landscape lit by the street lamps. "We'd better tell Calamity and Marcia how we got on."**

** Buster pulled out his phone and offered it.**

** Babs shook her head, her breath steaming in the cold air. "Heh. Their place is only five minutes away. I'd rather tell them in person by a nice warm fireside – my adorable toes are freezing!"**

** Five minutes later they were indeed at Calamity's cave, warming themselves around his suitcase-sized home fission reactor and brushing the snow off their fur while they told of their voyage and the places and spaces it had taken them through. Buster looked around; as usual, Calamity's cave was so packed with space-saving gadgets there was hardly room to move.**

** "We spent some quality time in that rather nice field," Babs concluded, having described it. She looked closely at Calamity and Marcia's bug-eyed reaction. "What?"**

_**You found that? You were just hopping around and found the Grand Unified Field? Not just a theory, but the real one?**_** Calamity's eyes went wide**_**. We've been looking for that for years!**_

** "Oh, you klutzy physicists," Babs tossed her ears mockingly. "You keep looking for things in all the wrong places. I heard you've even 'mislaid' most of the mass of the Universe. How absent-minded can you get? I bet you haven't even looked under the sofa cushions. That's where I usually find things."**

"**It was a pretty nice field," Buster mused. "Grand, even. Did you much want to find it?"**

"**Maybe we should have laid a trail of carrot-cake crumbs," Babs suggested. "I can't say we could get back again too easy."**

** "It's not the Theory of Almost Everything," Marcia noted "but on a good day you should be able to see it from there." Absent-mindedly she threw another shovel full of PluToonium on the reactor.**

_**Finding a whole, intact Field Theory just… sitting out there,**_** Calamity sat down heavily, his ears and shoulders drooping. **_**You bunnies have all the luck. **_**His sneaker-shod Toon feet were hardly tiny, but Babs' and Buster's Lucky Rabbit Feet ™ were obviously in a class of their own in the luck league.**

** "Intact? I hope it doesn't need to be totally intact to work," Buster winked. "Heh. We just might have … left it a bit wrinkled by the time we'd done with it."**

** Babs nuzzled him happily. "Creased, sure. Ruffled, even. Maybe… scratched a few little scrapes in it in the heat of the moment, you know." She put on a heavy Southern accent. "Does do dat, dey do."**

** "It's a Bunny thing," Babs and Buster chorused, holding paws. **

** Buster frowned, and scratched his head-fur. "What is all this Field thing anyway? And why did all my Hammerspace pockets unravel over there? You can't usually see into them."**

** Calamity wheeled a large old-fashioned blackboard in from somewhere conveniently off-camera, and set it up in front of Babs and Buster. He reached into his Hammerspace pocket and pulled out one of his own inventions; it looked like a dart, but actually comprised a heavily overclocked stick of high-performance chalk. **_**It's like this. All the different forces have their own charge carrying particles that make them work. Electromagnetic energy has photons which can make ionising radiation, Gravity has gravitons, Time has chronons, and the strong Cuteness force has Kawaiions. Hence you get Kawaiionising radiation, with particles such as Cuterons and Cuterinos.**_

** "Plus tachyons, but respectable physicists don't go looking for those," Marcia nodded. "If we find any we try and ignore them, and hope they go away really quickly."**

** "I can see that. Tacky-ones would be just too tacky for words." Babs nodded**_**. Which must be why physicists use so many equations,**_** she thought fleetingly.**

** "I wonder where onions fit into all this?" Buster pondered. "Maybe they're the charge-carriers for the strong weepy force. The one that powers most romantic fiction plotlines."**

_**Well, anyway**_**. Calamity tapped at the board with a pointer. **_**The idea is, in the right circumstances they should all resolve to be different aspects of the same thing, like seeing all the facets of a jewel at once. But you have to go up into higher dimensions to resolve the maths**_**.**

** "Been there, done that. Got the pictures. And we didn't even need any maths," Babs happily sang out. She paused. "Unless you count… a pretty good try at rabbit multiplication." She winked at Marcia. "You might say I've got that calculation still in progress. We're waiting for the results."**

** "Any positive answer we'll be pleased with," Buster added.**

** Calamity's red nose blushed. **_**And Hammerspace is one of the extra dimensions that usually coil up so tight a non-Toon can't even see it's there – let alone use it. But in higher dimensions it… unrolls to behave like any other.**_

** "A bit like climbing Mount Acme to get a better view?" Buster suggested.**

_**Sort of**_**. **_**It's where you get laws of mass and time and energy and gravity all tied up neatly. **_**Calamity signalled.**

** "Just like Wonder Bunny! Well, she's into that," Babs put on a righteous expression, and spun-changed into a super-heroine costume complete with twirling magical lariat that she somehow managed to tangle herself completely in. "Oopsie." She gave an embarrassed grin, but her cottontail wriggled invitingly.**

** Buster manifested a classic villain's black waxed moustache, and patted Babs' rump. "Arr, me proud beauty," he growled, twisting the ends of the moustache. "Just you wait till I gets you to me lair. No escape for you!"**

** Marcia sighed, and rolled her eyes. Unseen under Earthly lighting conditions, the 'bee purple' of her complexion blushed a little further into the ultraviolet. "It would be a dangerous place for us to explore. A place of horrible things like naked singularities."**

** "Those being?" Buster's ears twitched.**

** "Monstrous mathematical constructs. Points where causality breaks down, infinities go in all directions, physics loses its predictive powers and smoke comes out of the computer." Marcia shivered.**

** "Just as well I didn't take my laptop along, then," Buster said. He paused. "Hey! I think we saw one. It was pretty – singular." He rummaged around in his Hammerspace pocket. "Now, just what did I put in here?"**

** Babs crouched down, her eyes tracking warily from side to side. "**_**What has it got in its pocketses?**_**" She hissed, quoting a rival franchise.**

** Calamity's red nose paled, and he backed away nervously. **_**You surely didn't bring it with you? I don't want to see it! There's Cosmic Censorship laws against being able to see something like that. We could get into SO much trouble with Laws of Physics violations**_**!**

** "Good thing me and Babs aren't physicists," Buster grinned. He pulled out the obviously left-handed baseball bat, oblivious to the distant anguished howls of local animators. "Nah, I left it where it was. I only got this. Wouldn't want to bring back anything that got you busted."**

** Babs drew herself up haughtily. "Down with Cosmic Censorship! If an adult singularity wants to reveal its natural properties to the universe, that's a beautiful thing."**

** "**_**We're physics dispensers, we snub the Cosmic Censors,**_

_** On Quantum Toon Adventures get some super symmetry!**_**" Buster sang, parodying their old class song.**

** The two scientists winced in sync. Calamity erased the high-tech, heavily overclocked chalkboard and began to sketch a plan**_**. Thanks for trying! It was worth a go – but we'll have to try something else. This is Plan B…**_

* * *

**As Colonel Fenix had promised, most of Unit Four Plus Two had made a fast trip (courtesy of Sergeant Gander's travel shtick that had found them a convenient rocket-sled track pointing exactly in the right direction) back to the remote desert warehouse that stored decades worth of artefacts the Government had labelled as unexplainable or plain inconvenient.**

** Calgari and Angelina were strolling down the piled-high canyons of crates, looking up at the faded labels.**

** "Mmm. Pity we can only take one," Calgari mused. "What's in that crate?"**

** Sergeant Gander flicked through the catalogue, checking the numbers. "1930's style rocket pack. First-generation technology, it's a bit iffy. There were some incidents with fuel leaks over urban areas."**

** Angelina peered over his shoulder at the detailed notes. "Runs on red fuming nitric acid for oxidizer and high-test Dip for fuel." She paused, her eyes gleaming. "Well, and why not? I mean, what could possibly go wrong?"**

** "You can't have it – you can fly anyway," Sergeant Gander shooed her away. "Find something less… prone to so-called-tragic-accidents."**

** The magpie sniffed, and hopped on down the aisles of piled crates.**

** Shirley watched her go, and carefully centred her thoughts. Her aura took the hint and concentrated, scanning the ambience of what had lain there for so long. Faded notes on the side of the pinewood crates hinted of adventures and mysteries long forgotten and often quite rightly so; she was sure many of these items were only being made available because there was nobody left who could remember what a very bad idea opening some of those crates would be.**

** Suddenly she stopped, her aura having detected something of interest at the end of one aisle. She silently walked over to join her, and peered at the label. "Sergeant Gander? What's in this one?"**

** The tall goose checked the label on the crate against his typewritten list; recently the Extremely Special Forces had gone back to ink-ribbon technology much to the despair of the world computer hacker community. "Mirror of Nicrotis – something like a regular scrying globe but mostly looks at the futures." He frowned. "The notes say it works very well BUT…"**

** Shirley looked up at him. "But what?"**

** Sergeant Gander shrugged. "Half these notes are incomplete. You're talking about something transcribed from decaying field notebooks written in 1937. There was a warning on Page 2 … which we haven't got."**

** Shirley considered. Her aura looked hard at the artefact in the crate, apparently an ancient Egyptian mirror of polished bronze, now long-tarnished. She remembered using ones like it in long-ago incarnations in elegant porphyry temples by the side of the Nile. "I need one like this. I'm totally sure I can like, get it working."**

** The goose nodded, and handed her the (Crowbar of Wrecking [+3]) he carried. "Be my guest." He could sense something definitely strange about the mirror – but in this place, strange was the new normal.**

**They returned to the army-surplus store that was their local headquarters, eager to put their new artefacts to use. Shirley noted that across the road a parallel organisation was opening up; instead of steel helmets and army boots the Clerical Surplice Store would soon be doing a roaring trade in second-hand Bishop's mitres and Archimandrite chic.**

"**I've got a booster amulet for my symbiotic claws," Angelina enthused, popping the black astral-planar claws out and swishing them through the air. "Now I can lay on some serious hurt!" She paused. "There's a percentage chance of it – blowing back on me, though. I'll live with it."**

"**It's a good thing we're Toons, we're hard to damage permanently. Though some comic Toons have been known to laugh their heads off. And in the 1980's there was the body-popping dance craze. Some… popped. May as well try and rebuild a soap bubble."**

"**Cool." Angelina nodded, her eyes closed in what passed for happy thoughts for an Addams Academy graduate.**

"**Apart from that – we're tough." Calgari pulled out his Air Guitar, tuned it to acoustic mode and sang in the flat, nasal drawl of the 1960's Toon folk singer Bobcat Dylan:**

** "**_**Ah was out there painting in the armoury shed, when a chain-shot bomb, it blew off mah head**_

_** They hauled me off to regenerate, but survival dictated emergency rate**_

_** It cost a dollar! Twice price!"**_

"**Like, mondo waste of money that'd be," Shirley looked down her beak at him. "I could get four packs of harmonious sandalwood incense for that."**

** "Some folk don't appreciate art," Calgari sighed. "No taste at all." He tuned the air guitar to electric, and sang from an old Robyn Hitchcock track:**

"_**I had a girl the shape of you, I loved her with my breath**_

_**But I would hate to admit that romance, likes to end in death**_

_**And darkness is the shore of light! The truth is framed with lies!**_

_**And a girl can smile sweetly though her mouth is stuffed with flies.**_

_**I hung the phone up many times, to Angels when they rang**_

_**Their melodies were sickly sweet, like overripe meringue…" ***_

** "That's so deep. Infernal depths, even." Angelina adoringly stroked the raven's jet-black feathers with her own two-tone ones. "That's my idea of a romantic ballad, fer sure."**

** "You have romances?" Shirley asked incredulously. "At least I had a nest."**

"**Oh? Like you're poster-girl for Mom of the Year," Angelina grinned. "Even before you dropped them in an alternate world with no way back – and never bothered to even drop them a food parcel for Christmas - you'd dumped your eggs with that poor sap of a drake and left him to it."**

** "We were totally sharing responsibilities," Shirley snapped. "I had this job, to support us – Plucky didn't even have a paper round. And when the eggs hatched, I was going to raise them."**

** "Ah. Such a sharing type," Calgari gave a mock sigh. "He gets the boring bits… and you squeeze him out of passing anything important on to the chicks. You didn't allow him even a TV set to pass the time."**

** "TV is full of way negative vibes," Shirley said, her tail-feathers bristling. "Plucky's video games are worse. No way was I going to let those near our chicks."**

** "Well, you did a good job." Calgari nodded. "They've never been exposed to any of that. No modern culture, nothing to help them survive in this techno world. You'd make any fanatical Amish so proud of you. And they didn't cost you a penny to raise since the day you laid them, or an hour's worth of your too-valuable attention! That's what I call good value."**

_**At Perfecto, they had that totally grody motto about always having your cake and eating it,**_** Shirley's aura reflected **_**and then making some other Toon pay for it.**_

** "Exactly! They'd be proud of you too," Calgari nodded. "And so are we. Making Plucky pay for everything, and you still get to pass on your chromoplasm at his expense. You're making good progress towards joining our side of the Farce."**

** "Like you Addams Academy types are so into happy families?" Shirley looked down her beak at the dark avians. "Since when did they do bridal gowns in Gothic style?"**

** "Oh, they do. Just shows the boutiques you don't go to," Angelina winked. "I could take you to a few places where they do styles that'd have your feathers standing on end."**

"**We're perfectly capable of following that meme," Calgari protested. "Two of our favourite teachers were Addams graduates, and they're respectably married. To fine husbands any girl would envy them."**

** "That's right! They are lucky ladies; Mrs It Came From Beyond and Mrs The Thing That Eats Eyes." Tlalocopa nodded. "They teach us biology and cookery."**

** "And at Addams Academy, we get higher marks if we 'find' our own ingredients like that," Angelina said, her jet-black eyes gleaming. "Hey! We're not prejudiced about other Toons' diets. Not even your grody tofu."**

** "Might have to draw a line there…" Calgari murmured.**

** "And we have 'show and tell' sessions like you'd never believe," Angelina said. "Oh, the things some of our classmates brought in."**

** "Especially after their Practical Metaphysics classes," Tlalocopa's expression was wistful as the Chupacabra remembered. "Although some things they brought through, not stable for long in our universe."**

**(Editor's note: "Human Music" by Robyn Hitchcock and The Soft Boys)**

** Shirley winced. She had heard more about Addams Academy's Practical Metaphysics courses than she really wanted to; it was a wonder that Unit Four Plus Two had not yet been called out to gate-crash their midnight ritual classes. That would be a job she would volunteer for any night. "I am so out of here." She stalked away, closing the door firmly behind her as she went into the back room. A nice cup of herbal tea would settle her nerves, she thought – hopefully Calgari would not have playfully swapped her "Harmonious Energiser" blend with "Hellish Enervator" mix again.**

**Trying to relax before heading to her trailer for the evening, Shirley could still hear Calgari and Tlalocopa outside debating on how to convince Colonel Fenix to get an actual Lurking Monster for the team. Calgari favoured summoning something eldritch and many-eyed from forbidden sites in the nearby H.P. Lovecraft National Forest; Tlalocopa was holding out for recruiting an ever-hungry Gelatinous Cube™ that could dispose of any potentially embarrassing evidence (or witnesses), but the raven was insisting it would be "really way too square."**

**She looked around at Unit Four Plus Two's temporary headquarters, her feathers drooping as she checked the contents of the mailbox. Whereas her family home subscribed to the **_**Astral Journal **_**and **_**Aromatherapy Paramedic Times**_**, here she spotted Corporal Barnes' latest issue of **_**53 More things to do with**__**Entrenching Tools Weekly**_** magazine, which the ever-keen young collie would be eager to read and immediately put into practice. The copy of **_**True War Atrocities Illustrated (Colour Special Edition – now with how-to guides and pop-ups!**_**) was doubtless for one of the Addams Academy Toons.**

** Suddenly she froze. There was a personal letter for her. She did not recognise the handwriting, but as soon as she touched it she felt an aura she knew. "Like, mondo strange. Margot Mallard can write? I thought Perfectos dictated to P.A's and secretaries." She hefted the envelope cautiously; her aura peeked in checking for signs of booby-traps, but after a second's glance cautiously nodded. **_**It's just a note, or some junk**_**.**

** "Probably challenging me to a duel, winner gets Plucky. Like she thinks I'd want him, after her" Shirley reluctantly opened the envelope. Her eyes went wide as she spotted a high quality embossed card – it was an invitation, but not to duel with assault trifles at dawn. "Oh, it's just some lame invite. But for what?" Then she opened it.**

** "**_**You are respectfully invited to attend the wedding of Margot Masie Mallard and Pluckford Duck, to be held at Acme Acres Cathedral, noon Saturday 21**__**st**__** December. RSVP.**_**" she read out the printed invitation, her eyes bulging while her aura fizzed and crackled like a high-voltage transformer in the rain. "Oh gross. And there's more on the back". It was hand-written in flowing, cursive writing that Shirley's aura sensed had been written with a quill pen cut from one of Margot's own feathers. A dim memory emerged of something she had tried to avoid remembering her sorceress mother telling her about the dark ritual significance of that, as she read: "**_**Dear Shirley. Thanks for the wedding gift – a husband's the perfect present for a bride! Plucky's proved very handy and a lot of fun already. I'm sure I'll get years of good use out of him. P.S. As my soon-to-be-officially adopted daughters are a bit short of 21st century social skills - will you be my bridesmaid**_**?"**

** Shirley sat down, eyes wide in shock. The prophecy seemed to be working out right on schedule. "I was right the first time," she whispered to her aura. "It totally IS an invite to duel."**

**End Chapter Four**


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